This is the second minor release in the Matplotlib 2.x series and the first
release with major new features since 1.5.

This release contains approximately 2 years worth of work by 275 contributors
across over 950 pull requests. Highlights from this release include:

• support for string categorical values
• export of animations to interactive javascript widgets
• major overhaul of polar plots
• reproducible output for ps/eps, pdf, and svg backends
• performance improvements in drawing lines and images
• GUIs show a busy cursor while rendering the plot

along with many other enhancements and bug fixes.