Re: [matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling

[Paul H. <pmh...@gm...>]

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 5:03 PM, Michael Droettboom <md...@st...> wrote:

> On 05/30/2013 02:27 PM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal wrote:
> >
> > With a fully-function mathtex, it could be the default (only?) text
> > layout system for MPL, simplifying things quite a bit.
>
> I'm not sure that's realistic.  The usetex backend gets a great deal of
> use, and I don't think it's only because it handles multiline text
> better -- it's also the easiest way to make the text match that of a
> larger TeX document in which it's included (though the new PGF backend
> goes some way to helping that in an entirely different way).


Exactly! I like that I can set text.usetex=True and add
\usepackage{fourier} and I *know* that my figures and document will look
the same.

That said, I've never been able to get the PGF backend to work well. Random
elements are pixelated. It's surely user-error on my end, but the usetex is
comparatively easy to set up.


> It might
> be worth collating a list of reasons that users are using "usetex" to
> include in the MEP -- if we can address them all in another way, great,
> but if not it's not too difficult to keep something that already works
> fairly well working.  The problem I have with it is not really that it
> exists, only that it has tendrils all throughout matplotlib that could
> be better localized into a single set of modules.
>

As I state above -- I absolutely require One Font throughout my documents.
If it's a serif font, I use the fourier TeX package. If it's a sans-serif
font, I do the weird \sansmath voodoo (I still owe you a PR with an example
of setting that up). Point is, it works well.

Cheers,
-paul