[Matplotlib-users] Error on importing from pylab (font_manager.py)

[Handzsuj, T. <Tho...@dr...>]

Hi,

I am trying to use matplotlib 0.84 with Python 2.4.2 on Wondows XP with
idle -n. I did this in the past with the 2.3.5 and some older version of
matplotlib without any problems.

Now I have some problems. I started with a really fresh installation of
Python and added first the Numeric 23.8 module. After that I installed
matplotlib 0.84 and changed the matplotlibrc (tk.pythoninspect  : True).

Within Idle I get the following printout:
>>> from pylab import *
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in ?
    from pylab import *
  File "C:\Program Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\pylab.py", line 1,
in ?
    from matplotlib.pylab import *
  File "C:\Program
Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\pylab.py", line 198, in ?
    from axes import Axes, PolarAxes
  File "C:\Program Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\axes.py",
line 15, in ?
    from axis import XAxis, YAxis
  File "C:\Program Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\axis.py",
line 25, in ?
    from font_manager import FontProperties
  File "C:\Program
Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\font_manager.py", line 988,
in ?
    fontManager =3D FontManager()
  File "C:\Program
Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\font_manager.py", line 832,
in __init__
    rebuild()
  File "C:\Program
Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\font_manager.py", line 825,
in rebuild
    self.ttfdict =3D createFontDict(self.ttffiles)
  File "C:\Program
Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\font_manager.py", line 451,
in createFontDict
    font =3D ft2font.FT2Font(str(fpath))
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe4' in
position 19: ordinal not in range(128)
>>>=20

Any ideas about that?
(Hopefully a not too often asked question)

Thank you,
Thomas