Re: [Matplotlib-users] Fwd: Issues with TeX symbols and font changes

[Kacey A. <int...@gm...>]

Oh my goodness, thank you *so* much! I honestly can't thank you enough,
you've saved my thesis! I now have beautiful Angstrom symbols for my plots!
And the tips for changing the regular and mathtext fonts work like a charm.
Simply amazing.

I'm done gushing now, but thank you so much again!

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 8:17 AM, Michael Droettboom <md...@st...> wrote:

> Kacey A. wrote:
>
> > Originally emailed this off to the wrong list, but any help would be
> > much appreciated!
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: *Kacey A.* <int...@gm... <mailto:int...@gm...>>
> > Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 8:44 PM
> > Subject: Issues with TeX symbols and font changes
> > To: sci...@sc... <mailto:sci...@sc...>
> >
> >
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I've spent more time than I care to share trying to remedy this, but it
> > just doesn't seem to be working... So long story short, I'm trying to insert
> > a special symbol in my axis label, so I type the following:
> >
> > [1] xlabel = (r"Wavelength ($\AA$)")
> >
> > ...in order to receive the symbol for angstroms (an "A" with a circle
> > above it). Problem is... whereas the rest of my plot is in whatever the
> > default Scipy plot font is (Tahoma, perhaps?),
> >
> The default font is Bitstream Vera Sans.
>
> > the stubborn angstroms symbol is in Times New Roman-esque font, which is
> > bothering me to no end. I've attempted just changing the font of the entire
> > font by using
> >
> > [2] font = {"fontname":"Times New Roman"}
> > ...
> > [3] xlabel = (ur"Wavelength ($\AA$)", **font)
> >
> > ...but unfortunately that does nothing to affect the font of the axis
> > tickmark labels (i.e. the numbers along the axes) -- so while my axis labels
> > (excluding the angstrom symbol) and plot text (i.e. text(x,y,string)) might
> > be in the font set via command [2], the axis numbering will *still* be in
> > the default (i.e. Tahoma).
> >
> To change the font globally (excluding mathtext), you can do:
>
>  rc('font', family='Times New Roman')
>
> >
> > For what help it's worth, I'm running OS X (10.4.11) and Python 2.5.1,
> > although I'm not 100% certain of what version of Scipy and Numpy I have
> > installed... (I *think* I'm running Scipy 0.3.2). I'm also using TextMate to
> > type and run my scripts.
> >
> > Thanks so much for any help in advance! I really love SciPy, but if
> > there's really no feasible workaround for this... I might just have to use a
> > different package altogether. Thanks again.
> >
> When using mathtext (putting symbols inside of a pair of $), unfortunately
> the font choices are rather limited.  You basically have a choice of
> Computer Modern (used in TeX/LaTeX documents), STIX (which is based on
> Times), and STIX sans (which is sans-serif, based on some font I haven't
> been able to identify).  This font can be set with the mathtext.fontset
> rcParam (to one of cm, stix, stixsans or custom).
>
> Fortunately, all is not lost.  If all you need to is an Angstrom symbol,
> you can use Unicode rather than mathtext.  The code point for Å (A with ring
> above) is C5 -- so you can type the following string in Python:
>
>   ur"Wavelength (\u00c5)"
>
> I hope that one of these options will prove helpful.
> Cheers,
> Mike
>
> --
> Michael Droettboom
> Science Software Branch
> Operations and Engineering Division
> Space Telescope Science Institute
> Operated by AURA for NASA
>
>