# Changes for 0.81

``` text
- pylab and artist "set" functions renamed to setp to avoid clash
  with python2.4 built-in set.  Current version will issue a
  deprecation warning which will be removed in future versions

- imshow interpolation arguments changes for advanced interpolation
  schemes.  See help imshow, particularly the interpolation,
  filternorm and filterrad kwargs

- Support for masked arrays has been added to the plot command and
  to the Line2D object.  Only the valid points are plotted.  A
  "valid_only" kwarg was added to the get_xdata() and get_ydata()
  methods of Line2D; by default it is False, so that the original
  data arrays are returned. Setting it to True returns the plottable
  points.

- contour changes:

  Masked arrays: contour and contourf now accept masked arrays as
    the variable to be contoured.  Masking works correctly for
    contour, but a bug remains to be fixed before it will work for
    contourf.  The "badmask" kwarg has been removed from both
    functions.

   Level argument changes:

     Old version: a list of levels as one of the positional
     arguments specified the lower bound of each filled region; the
     upper bound of the last region was taken as a very large
     number.  Hence, it was not possible to specify that z values
     between 0 and 1, for example, be filled, and that values
     outside that range remain unfilled.

     New version: a list of N levels is taken as specifying the
     boundaries of N-1 z ranges.  Now the user has more control over
     what is colored and what is not.  Repeated calls to contourf
     (with different colormaps or color specifications, for example)
     can be used to color different ranges of z.  Values of z
     outside an expected range are left uncolored.

     Example:
       Old: contourf(z, [0, 1, 2]) would yield 3 regions: 0-1, 1-2, and >2.
       New: it would yield 2 regions: 0-1, 1-2.  If the same 3 regions were
       desired, the equivalent list of levels would be [0, 1, 2,
       1e38].
```