[matplotlib-devel] Dealing (gracefully?) with problematic fonts

[Hubert H. <Hub...@fr...>]

Paris (U.E.), le 08/12/2014

	The transition to MacOS X 10.10 (and more precisely 10.10.1) is proving quite problematic. One problem I am currently stuck with prevents me from using matplotlib.

	Whether using matplotlib 1.4.2 and freetype 2.3.12 (combination A) or matplotlib 59eda228e6a77e842c63078c3af870868120e70c and freetype 2.5.3 (combination B), importing matplotlib.pylab results in a crash. I have not tried other combinations…

	In the case of combination A, the crash occurs because FT_Set_Char_Size (ft2font.cpp, line 909) returns an error because of the font “/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttf” and an uncaught exception is then thrown on line 916.

	In the case of combination B, the crash occurs because FT_Set_Char_Size (ft2font.cpp, line 508) returns an error because of an unidentified font (I could not quickly find a way, in this version of the file, to access the name of the font being tested…) and an uncaught exception is then thrown on line 510.

	As the font “/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttf” is a system font, and therefore off-limits to most users, it would be unadvisable to mess with it (including removing it from the system), and even though I would personally be quite unlikely to use it in conjunction with matplotlib, our Japanese colleagues might see things differently. At any rate, it does not seem to be corrupt (it may be complex, though, as TypeTool displays it differently from Font Book, which is hardly surprising as it is a *color* font…).

	Barring a more sophisticated treatment of such fonts, could it be possible to catch the exception, just not take these fonts into account, and move on to the rest of the work? I have not grasped the organisation of the source that well to know where to propose a patch. Any hint welcome!

		Hubert Holin

P.S.: I have also not found a way of creating a figure without having to import matplotlib.pylab.