[Matplotlib-users] Problem getting math symbols into text

[Michael H. <jm_...@ya...>]

Greetings.  I'm unable to get mathtext to work properly on my linux system:

    # cat /etc/redhat-release 
    Fedora release 13 (Goddard)

    # uname -a
    Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.33.6-147.2.4.fc13.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jul 23
    17:14:44 UTC 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

The problem is essentially identical to one that is described in the thread
at:

http://www.mail-archive.com/mat...@li.../msg09208.html

I didn't see a real resolution to the problem in that thread, at least not one
that applied to me.

In brief, when I specify a math symbol in a text string, say:

    r'$\pi$'

I get some "random" character (capital A in this case) at the place where I'm
supposed to see the Greek letter Pi.

Furthermore, if I try to coerce the use of the Greek letters by setting
"text.markup" to "tex", either interactively or in the rc file, I get an error
saying that it's not a valid parameter:

    Bad key "text.markup" on line 161 in ... matplotlibrc

for instance.  This is followed by the message:

    You probably need to get an updated matplotlibrc file from
    http://matplotlib.sf.net/_static/matplotlibrc or from the matplotlib
    source distribution

But the file at that link still contains:

    #text.markup:'plain'  # Affects how text, such as titles and labels, are
                          # interpreted by default.
                          # 'plain': As plain, unformatted text
                          # 'tex': As TeX-like text.  Text between $'s
                          # will be
                          # formatted as a TeX math expression.
                          # This setting has no effect when text.usetex
                          # is True.
                          # In that case, all text will be sent to TeX
                          # for
                          # processing.

I don't know what to make of this.  I did the following to try to pin down the
parameters:

    import matplotlib as mpl
    import pprint
    x = mpl.rcParams.keys()
    x.sort()
    pprint.pprint(x)

This produced:

    .
    .
    .
    'svg.image_noscale',
    'text.color',
    'text.dvipnghack',
    'text.fontangle',
    'text.fontsize',
    'text.fontstyle',
    'text.fontvariant',
    'text.fontweight',
    'text.latex.preamble',
    'text.latex.preview',
    'text.latex.unicode',
    'text.usetex',
    'timezone',
    .
    .
    .

Indeed, there does not seem to be a "text.markup" in this list.

I have tried this both with and without an rc file, and I've tried it after
deleting completely my .matplotlib directory.  I get the same results in all
cases.

OTOH, if I set:

    text.usetex

to "True", I do get the expected mathematical symbols, albeit after a noticeable
delay.

I've got the following two matplotlib packages installed:

    python-matplotlib-0.99.1.2-4.fc13.x86_64
    python-matplotlib-tk-0.99.1.2-4.fc13.x86_64

and the system is running Python 2.6.4.

Any suggestions?  Maybe I'm missing a package?

Thanks.

-- Mike