The clue is in my last sentence and in the demo script of PyGTK. Without successful >>> import gtk
cannot be matplotlib compiled with PyGTK support.
I had not correctly set $PYTHONPATH
, which should not only point to /software/pygtk-2.24.0/gcc/lib/python2.7/site-packages
, but also to /software/pygtk-2.24.0/gcc/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gtk-2.0
. So
export PYTHONPATH=/software/pygtk-2.24.0/gcc/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gtk-2.0:/software/pygtk-2.24.0/gcc/lib/python2.7/site-packages:$PYTHONPATH
after PyGTK installation to my non standard directory has done it's job.