[Matplotlib-users] how to put non-latin text on plots?

[Oz N. <na...@gm...>]

Hi Everyone,
Not really related to my every day work, but I was asking myself how to put
non latin letters, like arabic or hebrew on plots.

I found a way to put german umlauts and ß but this is only a very partial
solution. It would be cool to know how to over come this.

My code to work with umlauts is:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

def format(x, pos=None):
   if x == 0.0:
       exp = 0
   else:
       exp = int(np.log10(np.abs(x)))
   mant = x / 10**exp
   return '%.1fE%+d' % (mant, exp)

f = plt.figure()
ax = f.add_subplot(111)
data = np.array([1,2,3,4,5]) / 100.
ax.plot(data, np.arange(len(data)))

ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(plt.FuncFormatter(format))
ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(plt.FuncFormatter(format))
ax.text(0.03,0.5,"Umlauts äüöß"+ u"\u00e4")
plt.show()

If I include arabic or hebrew letters I get Bricks displays.

Thanks in advance,

Oz

-- 
Oz Nahum
Graduate Student
Zentrum für Angewandte Geologie
Universität Tübingen

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