Thread: [Matplotlib-users] Using special characters

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Hello.

I've been having trouble getting Unicode characters to render.  I just
get a box in the title of my figure, rather than the character I need.

Here is my code:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from pylab import *
plot([1,2,3,4])
title(u"\u0251")
savefig("test.eps")
savefig("test.png")
show()

That character is LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA.  It's used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet.

I'm on Linux and I'm using matplotlib 0.90.1-2 (debian package
version).  I have a few TTF fonts in my system that contain that
glyph.  One is 'Arial Unicode MS', which I copied from my windows
machine.

As you can see, I will need to generate an EPS that renders the
character...  That EPS file will be imported into MS Word on a Windows
PC and printed.

I will happily use any solution that allows me to use that character
in the final product... :)  It doesn't have to be unicode..

I believe that my fonts are configured correctly on this Linux
system--I can use the Arial Unicode MS font in Open Office.  However,
I'm not sure that MPL is finding them.

When I point the TTFPATH environment variable a directory that only
contains ARIALUNI.TTF, I get gibberish for all characters in my
figure.

When I use ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc to list Arial Unicode MS as the
only font in the san-serif family, I don't observe any change in the
text in the figure.

...I did successfully instantiate an FT2FONT object out of my
ARIALUNI.TTF file, but, I didn't know what to do with it at that
point.

Help?

Cheers,
--Dave Loyall
Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Thread: [Matplotlib-users] Using special characters

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