title: The preferred way to set matplotlib figure/axes properties
body: <p>Say I have a matplotlib axes called <code>ax</code>, and I want to set several of its properties. Currently, I do it like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ax.set_yscale('log')
  ax.set_xlim([0,10])
  ax.set_xlabel('some label')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But it gets tedious after a while. Then I ran into this method:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ax.set(yscale='log', xlim=[0,10], xlabel='some label')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Much more concise, but it seems a bit undocumented. I mean all the documentation says is "A tkstyle set command, pass <em>kwargs</em> to set properties". </p>
  
  <p>What is the preferred or idiomatic way?
  Is the <code>set</code> method api stable?</p>