Change Matplotlib's default font

Question

I'm trying to change matplotlib's default font to Helvetica Neue. On my Mac with EPD/Canopy everything worked fine some time ago.

Trying to do the same on ubuntu now and it's not working.

This is what I did:

1. Installed Helvetica Neue

   $ fc-match 'Helvetica Neue':Light HelveticaNeue-Light.otf: "Helvetica Neue" "細體" 

2. Converted the odt/dfont into ttf:

   fondu -show HelveticaNeue.dfont 

3. changed matplotlibrc to

   $ cat ~/.config/matplotlib/matplotlibrc ... font.family: Helvetica Neue 

   I also tried with:

   font.family: sans-serif font.sans-serif: Helvetica Neue 

4. I removed the font cache

   rm ~/.config/matplotlib/fontList.cache 

But none of these steps are working for me.

    $ python -c 'from  matplotlib import pyplot as plt; plt.plot(1); plt.savefig("/tmp/test.png")'     /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib-1.3.0-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/font_manager.py:1236:      UserWarning: findfont: Font family ['Helvetica Neue'] not found. Falling back to Bitstream Vera Sans 

(prop.get_family(), self.defaultFamily[fontext]))

Version is 1.3.0

    $ python -c 'import matplotlib; print  matplotlib.__version__'     1.3.0 

I also tried moving the fonts to ~/.config/matplotlib/fonts/ttf but it didn't work.

---

EDIT: As suggested I tried selecting a specific font for a specific text.

import matplotlib as mpl mpl.use('Agg') import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import matplotlib.font_manager as font_manager  path = '/home/<myusername>/.fonts/HelveticaNeue.ttf'  prop = font_manager.FontProperties(fname=path) prop.set_weight = 'light' mpl.rcParams['font.family'] = prop.get_name() mpl.rcParams['font.weight'] = 'light'  fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.set_title('Text in a cool font', fontproperties=prop, size=40) plt.savefig('/tmp/test2.png') 

But it makes no difference.

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib-1.3.0-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/font_manager.py:1236:  UserWarning: findfont: Font family ['Helvetica Neue'] not found. Falling back to Bitstream Vera Sans 

However I seem to experience this problem only with this Helvetica/Helvetica Neue font. (prop.get_family(), self.defaultFamily[fontext]))

Answer 1

This will not change your font permanently, but it's worth a try.

matplotlib.rc('font', family='sans-serif')  matplotlib.rc('font', serif='Helvetica Neue')  matplotlib.rc('text', usetex='false')  matplotlib.rcParams.update({'font.size': 22}) 

Answer 2

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Upload the fonts

sudo cp NotoSansKR-Regular.otf /usr/share/fonts/ 

Update the cache of font

sudo fc-cache -fv 

You can check the font list

fc-list 

Restart ipython, etc. Check the font list

[f.name for f in matplotlib.font_manager.fontManager.ttflist] 

Take a your font name

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from matplotlib import rcParams rcParams['font.family'] = 'Noto Sans Korean' 

Draw

plt.title(u'한글 제목') plt.xlabel(u'한글 축 이름') plt.plot(range(5))