Somewhat related to #596, it would be good to have a function, analogous to [Matlab's shg](http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/shg.html), to bring a desired plot window to the front. This was discussed [on StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8202228/make-matplotlib-plotting-window-pop-up-as-the-active-one), but the only solution there was to use a `raise_` method that seems to be specific to the Qt backend.