ggplot text rendering not working for some fonts

Question

I have been trying to add a google font to my ggplots, but the text renders with lots of gaps in it. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Seems like it may be an operating system specific problem. I'm using: OS: MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 R version: 4.0.4

Here is an example with massive text to demonstrate the problem:

library(ggplot2)
library(sysfonts)
library(showtext)
font_add_google("Work Sans")
showtext_auto()
ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) +
  geom_point()+
  theme(text = element_text(family = "Work Sans", size =100),
        axis.text = element_blank())

Answer 1

Looks like an issue with the variable font file. As a workaround, perhaps you could download the static version of the font from https://github.com/weiweihuanghuang/Work-Sans/tree/master/fonts/static/TTF and use that instead, e.g.

library(ggplot2)
#install.packages("sysfonts")
library(sysfonts)
#install.packages("showtext")
library(showtext)
font_add("Work Sans", regular = "~/Downloads/WorkSans-Regular.ttf")
showtext_auto()
ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) +
  geom_point()+
  theme(text = element_text(family = "Work Sans", size = 100),
        axis.text = element_blank())

Would also be good to open an issue on github and see if the package author can help.