[Matplotlib-users] KeyError in OS X 10.6.8 Install (by any means).

[Steve B. <sgw...@ya...>]

All,

On my iMac at work running 10.6.8, I did a brew-based installation of Python 2.7.2. I used pip to install scipy, numpy and then matplotlib. The last didn't work right so I scoured the internets to find out what to do. The first solution I found suggested doing a git clone of the repository and running python setup.py build then python setup.py install. That worked just great.

At home, I tried the same thing on my MBP running 10.6.8. When I got to the compile matplotlib step, the fix from above didn't work. So I started trying other solutions I had found. Many of them "worked", however, when I went to run this simple script:

import matplotlib.pylab as plt
from scipy.stats import norm

I got this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "plot.py", line 1, in <module>
    import matplotlib.pylab as plt
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/pylab.py", line 221, in <module>
    from matplotlib import mpl  # pulls in most modules
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/mpl.py", line 2, in <module>
    from matplotlib import axis
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/axis.py", line 10, in <module>
    import matplotlib.font_manager as font_manager
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 1323, in <module>
    _rebuild()
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 1273, in _rebuild
    fontManager = FontManager()
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 997, in __init__
    self.afmlist = createFontList(self.afmfiles, fontext='afm')
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 565, in createFontList
    prop = afmFontProperty(fpath, font)
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 501, in afmFontProperty
    weight = weight_as_number(font.get_weight().lower())
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib-1.2.x-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/afm.py", line 464, in get_weight
    return self._header['Weight']
KeyError: 'Weight'

Googling did not reveal a single occurrence of this error reported anywhere.

And so I would move on to the next instructions for compilation including the original make.osx instructions...and while the compilations succeeded, I still got the same error. Finally I decided to try the Enthought completely pre-compiled and packaged installation. Same problem.

I'm at a loss. I even completely erased my /usr/local/ directory so that everything would be consistently installed via Homebrew. But no matter what I do, I end up with the same problem.

I'm considering that something is wrong with my Snow Leopard installation and perhaps (reluctantly) upgrading to Lion, something I haven't really felt compelled to do. I'm hoping that there is a setting that I neglected.

Ideas? 


Thanks,
Steve