Re: [Matplotlib-users] Problems with sans-serif fonts and tick labels with TeX

[Michael D. <md...@st...>]

On 05/02/2013 03:16 PM, Paul Hobson wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Michael Droettboom <md...@st... 
> <mailto:md...@st...>> wrote:
>
>     I think the confusion here stems from the fact that you're mixing
>     TeX and non-TeX font commands.
>
>     This turns on TeX mode, so all of the text is rendered with an
>     external TeX installation:
>
>     rc('text', usetex=True)
>
>     In this line, setting it to sans-serif will get passed along to
>     TeX, but a specific ttf font name can not be used by TeX, so the
>     second part (involving Helvetica) is ignored.  And setting the
>     default body text in TeX does not (by default) change the math
>     font.  This is (unfortunately standard TeX behavior).
>
>     rc('font',**{'family':'sans-serif','sans-serif':['Helvetica']})
>
>     This affects the font set used by matplotlib's internal mathtext
>     renderer, and has no effect on TeX:
>
>     rc('mathtext', fontset='stixsans')
>
>     The solution I use when I want all sans-serif out of TeX is to use
>     the cmbright package, which can be turned on by adding:
>
>     rc('text.latex', preamble=r'\usepackage{cmbright}')
>
>     That may require installing the cmbright LaTeX package if you
>     don't already have it.
>
>     I know all this stuff is confusing, but providing a flat interface
>     over both the internal text rendering and the TeX rendering isn't
>     really possible -- they have different views of the world -- and
>     I'm actually not sure it's desirable.  Though I wonder if we
>     couldn't make it more obvious (somehow) when the user is mixing
>     configuration that applies to the different contexts.
>
>     Mike
>
>
> Mike,
>
> Thanks for the guidance. I know this stuff is complicated and the work 
> everyone has put into it to make it work is fantastic.
>
> I now see that this was more of TeX issue than an MPL configuration 
> issue. Your help prompted me to find this solution (similar to yours):
> mpl.rcParams['text.latex.preamble'] = [
>        r'\usepackage{siunitx}',   # i need upright \micro symbols, but 
> you need...
>        r'\sisetup{detect-all}',   # ...this to force siunitx to 
> actually use your fonts
>        r'\usepackage{helvet}',    # set the normal font here
>        r'\usepackage{sansmath}',  # load up the sansmath so that math 
> -> helvet
>        r'\sansmath']  # <- tricky! -- gotta actually tell tex to use!

Wow.  That's some serious TeX voodoo magic!  Want to work that into an 
example that we could include in the docs?

Cheers,
Mike