Re: [Matplotlib-users] Re: usetex font solution

[Darren D. <dd...@co...>]

I made some improvements to the usetex option over the last few days in order 
to make font selection fit seemlessly with the rest of Matplotlib. The usetex 
option will now respect the serif, sans-serif, monospace, and cursive rc 
settings. Usetex looks until it finds a latex-compatible font, or defaults to 
computer modern. Proper font support with plainTeX is more difficult, and 
everyone seems to use the latex backend anyway, so I am dropping support of 
the tex engine. With these changes, the font.latex.package and the 
text.tex.engine rc settings are no longer needed, and should be removed from 
ones personal matplotlibrc file.

Here are the currently supported latex fonts:

- serif: Times, Palatino, Bookman, New Century Schoolbook, Charter, Computer 
Modern Roman (Times and Palatino have their own math fonts, the others 
default to computer modern math fonts)

- sans-serif: Helvetica, Avant Garde, Computer Modern Sans Serif (I added 
Avant Garde to the matplotlibrc.template)

- monospace: Courier, Computer Modern Typewriter

- cursive: Zapf Chancery

The font.family setting is respected and should be used to switch from one 
family to another. Cursive fonts are supported with latex, but fantasy fonts 
are not (raises a warning and defaults to serif). If you use the usetex 
option, please kick the tires and let me know how it goes.

Darren