Getting xkcd plots using matplotlib

Question

The current version of matplotlib (1.3.1) supports xkcd-style plotting, but when I follow the basic instructions for generating such a plot (in iPython 1.1.0),

%pylab
plt.xkcd()
plt.plot(sin(linspace(0, 10)))
plt.title('Whoo Hoo!!!')

I get

instead of

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

To get it working, you need

• matplotlib 1.3.1 (it won't work with matplotlib 1.3.0 or earlier)
  • sudo pip install matplotlib --upgrade
• font Humor Sans
  • download from here or here, install (on OS X you open it and click Install)
• remove the matplotlib font cache (as suggested by DanHickstein in matplotlib/issues/2269)
  • rm ~/.matplotlib/fontList.cache

Now, execute the code and it should work.

You do not need to change backend to TkAgg, as some people suggest. For me it works perfectly fine on 'module://IPython.kernel.zmq.pylab.backend_inline' (you can check it by plt.get_backend()).

(I had the same problem and I've solved it, at least on OS X 10.8.5, with matplotlib 1.3.1 and IPython 2.0.0; removing font cache was necessary to get the font running.)

Answer 2

Using ubuntu 16.04 and python 3, with matplotlib 2.0.0 installed the following fixes the problem for me.

1. Install Comic sans: sudo apt install fonts-humor-sans
2. Remove matplotlib cache: rm ~/.cache/matplotlib -r

Answer 3

Make sure you have fonts-humor-sans installed.

In Ubuntu/Debian, you can install them with (from the command-line):

$ sudo apt install python3-xkcd fonts-humor-sans

Then the best option (instead of deleting the matplotlib cache) is to rebuild the font manager (from within the Python interpreter, script or Jupyter notebook):

import matplotlib
matplotlib.font_manager._rebuild()