issue_comments

Yes, this would have created 3 animations. Matplotlib requires a reference to an animation to be held. So, del imshow_animation del line_animation should effectively remove the 2 additional animations. Though this is cumbersome.

You might be able to add blocks in an existing animation by: anim.blocks.append(extra_block) since the animation object stores the blocks as a list, but this is currently undocumented and circumvents the check to ensure that all blocks are the same length. (I haven't tested it, but so long as the added block is at least as long as the other blocks it should work.)

Another thing to consider is that animations also take an optional "Timeline" which holds the values of time at each frame of the animation, which can be displayed using the timeline_slider method. Though, I think I have an idea for a title block.... (lots of ideas on the go for the next release of animatplot).

From what I understand of xarray, the timeline object can be constructed using coords. If you return blocks, the you may want to return this timeline object.

I'd probably lean towards xarray returning the animation. In that case, the internal implementation may want to create a new matplotlib figure for each of the animation.

Matplotlib's axis is a place to plot stuff. Animatplot's blocks are "things" that are to be animated. Multiple blocks can be attached to a single axis like multiple lines or a pcolormesh + quiver plot. Right now, all of the blocks animate data, but in the future there will be blocks that animate annotations or modify some axis settings.

Maybe you'll prefer to return an animation with a single block, but if you return the block then you can combine it with more blocks. You could animate two imshow's side by side. Now, I believe that matplotlib does have the ability to attach multiple animations to a single figure, but that could cause issues with syncing, and animatplot's controls would likely (read should) control each animation individually.