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AgilentGCMS opened this issue Nov 7, 2019 · 3 comments · Fixed by #15626
Closed

Cannot use many system fonts in matplotlib #15625

AgilentGCMS opened this issue Nov 7, 2019 · 3 comments · Fixed by #15626
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topic: text/fonts

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@AgilentGCMS
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Bug report

Bug summary

I cannot use many of my system fonts inside matplotlib. If I specify a font family as an explicit argument, e.g.,

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.figure()
plt.figtext(0.5, 0.5, 'Sample text', ha='center', va='center', family='DejaVu Sans Condensed', size=10)

I get this message:

findfont: Font family ['DejaVu Sans Condensed'] not found. Falling back to DejaVu Sans.

However, DejaVu Sans Condensed is definitely there on the system:

$ fc-list | grep DejaVu | grep Condensed
DejaVu Serif,DejaVu Serif Condensed:style=Condensed,Book
DejaVu Serif,DejaVu Serif Condensed:style=Condensed Bold Italic,Bold Italic
DejaVu Serif,DejaVu Serif Condensed:style=Condensed Bold,Bold
DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed Oblique,Oblique
DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed Bold Oblique,Bold Oblique
DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed,Book
DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed Bold,Bold
DejaVu Serif,DejaVu Serif Condensed:style=Condensed Italic,Italic

Same for some other fonts such as 'Nimbus Sans L'.

More (related) info
When I delete ~/.cache/matplotlib and start ipython, I get the following message:

$ ipython --profile=python3 --pylab
Python 3.7.4 (default, Aug 26 2019, 13:24:44) 
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
IPython 7.7.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.

IPython profile: python3
fc-list: unrecognized option '--format=%{file}\n'
usage: fc-list [-vV?] [--verbose] [--version] [--help] [pattern] {element ...} 
List fonts matching [pattern]

  -v, --verbose        display status information while busy
  -V, --version        display font config version and exit
  -?, --help           display this help and exit
Using matplotlib backend: TkAgg

The error message from fc-list makes me think that matplotlib cannot build its font cache.

Further, I tried probing matplotlib.font_manager directly.

import matplotlib.font_manager
In [5]: [s for s in matplotlib.font_manager.findSystemFonts() if 'DejaVuSansCondensed' in s]                                                                                        
Out[5]: 
['/usr/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSansCondensed-Bold.ttf',
 '/usr/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSansCondensed-Oblique.ttf',
 '/usr/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSansCondensed.ttf',
 '/usr/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSansCondensed-BoldOblique.ttf']

However, if I try to get a list of fontconfig fonts, it returns empty:

In [6]: flist = matplotlib.font_manager.get_fontconfig_fonts()                                                                                                                      

In [7]: flist                                                                                                                                                                       
Out[7]: []

Expected outcome

I should be able to use basic system fonts in matplotlib.

Matplotlib version

  • Operating system: SuSE Linux 64 bit
  • Matplotlib version: 3.1.1 (installed with pip install matplotlib)
  • Matplotlib backend (print(matplotlib.get_backend())): TkAgg
  • Python version: 3.7.4
  • Jupyter version (if applicable): N/A
@anntzer
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anntzer commented Nov 7, 2019 •
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What does running fc-list --format='%{file}\n' at the terminal return for you?
What is your version of fontconfig?
It looks like fc-list --format was implemented in fontconfig 10y ago (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/commit/0c93b91db0cdf7c5e901477c266b45c8baeadd00) so I'm comfortable saying we only support fontconfig versions that are more recent than that (which means >=2.7), given that this only affects autodetection of system fonts.

@anntzer anntzer mentioned this issue Nov 7, 2019
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@AgilentGCMS
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Yikes, my fontconfig version is 2.6, and fc-list --format='%{file}\n' returns an invalid argument error. Given that this is on a high performance computing cluster over which I have little control, is there a workaround? Perhaps by modifying the matplotlib code?

@anntzer
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anntzer commented Nov 7, 2019 •
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You can explicitly pass font paths: https://matplotlib.org/gallery/text_labels_and_annotations/font_file.html#sphx-glr-gallery-text-labels-and-annotations-font-file-py

The reason for using --format=%{file} is essentially discussed at #2433 (diff).

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Note minimum supported version for fontconfig. anntzer/matplotlib
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@anntzer @AgilentGCMS