[authyx]

Overview

Comment-only change. Adds explanatory notes next to two intentional explicit base __init__ calls so they are not "simplified" to super().__init__() in future cleanups.

Motivated by #5067, which proposed replacing every Parent.__init__(self, ...) with super().__init__(...). Investigation there showed the pattern is intentional at the real call sites, and a mechanical replacement would break things. This PR documents why, so the question does not come up again.

Details

manim/camera/mapping_camera.py — SplitScreenCamera

Camera.__init__(self, **kwargs)   # to set attributes such as pixel_width
...
half_width = math.ceil(self.pixel_width / 2)   # requires pixel_width set above

The explicit call must run before super().__init__(...). Replacing it with super() would dispatch to OldMultiCamera (which expects positional camera tuples) and pixel_width would never be set, raising AttributeError.

manim/mobject/graphing/coordinate_systems.py — Axes

class Axes(VGroup, CoordinateSystem, metaclass=ConvertToOpenGL):
    def __init__(self, ...):
        VGroup.__init__(self, **kwargs)
        CoordinateSystem.__init__(self, x_range, y_range, x_length, y_length)

VGroup and CoordinateSystem are non-cooperative bases, so super().__init__() follows only one MRO branch and skips CoordinateSystem.__init__ entirely, leaving the instance half-initialized. Minimal repro:

class CoordinateSystem:
    def __init__(self, *a, **k): self.cs_init = True
class VGroup:
    def __init__(self, *a, **k): self.vg_init = True

class Axes(VGroup, CoordinateSystem):
    def __init__(self, *a, **k):
        super().__init__(*a, **k)

a = Axes()   # a.vg_init == True, a.cs_init == False

Checklist

• Comment-only change; no behaviour modified
• Both files pass python -m py_compile
• All added lines within the 88-char limit
• Awaiting maintainer input on whether to close Replace ParentClass.__init__(self with super().__init__ #5067 as wontfix or reframe it as a larger cooperative-super() refactor

Closes nothing on its own — left open pending #5067 direction.

[GniLudio]

good-first-issue's should be kept for humans.

[authyx]

@GniLudio still a good-first-issue?

[GniLudio]

@GniLudio still a good-first-issue?

You are welcome to contribute to manim, but I would recommend you to avoid relying on AI-agents too much for your first contribution, so that you can familiarize yourself with the codebase a bit.