[Matplotlib-users] setting figure font to helvetica

[per f. <per...@gm...>]

hi,

i am trying to use the Helvetica font on matplotlib. i am using mac os x (so
i definitely have helvetica installed) with version 0.98.5.2 of matplotlib.
my code is:

from scipy import *
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('PDF')
from matplotlib import rc
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
rc('font',**{'family':'sans-serif','sans-serif':['Helvetica']})
plt.rcParams['font.family'] = 'Helvetica'
plt.hist(rand(100))
xlabel(r"My x axis $\alpha$")
ylabel(r"My y axis $\beta$")

i verified that plt.rcParams gets modified to use 'Helvetica' as the value
for font.family, etc. but i still get the default font used in all of these
figures. i tried using the PS backend using matplotlib.use('PS') but the
problem persists. i am interested in getting out PDFs that use helvetica
everywhere.

does anyone know how to fix this? thank you.