Re: [Matplotlib-users] mathtext and postscript backend

[John H. <jdh...@ac...>]

>>>>> "Humufr" == Humufr  <hu...@ya...> writes:

    Humufr>        Hello, I have a problem to obtain a good ps file
    Humufr> (with mathematical symbol) with matplotlib. That's work
    Humufr> very good with a png file but not with a postscript.

    Humufr> I tried to define the TTFPATH and AFMPATH but that change
    Humufr> nothing. I think that I miss one configuration somewhere
    Humufr> but I can't arrive to find what...

    Humufr> Thank you for this soft, I just begin to use but it's
    Humufr> seems very interesting

I haven't yet added mathtext to the postscript backend, though I will
as soon as I get the time.  See the mathtext documentation at
http://matplotlib.sf.net/matplotlib.mathtext.html for the latest
information about mathtext, which backends it works on, etc...

mathtext is designed around the BaKoMa truetype fonts.  There are also
postscript versions of these fonts.  Paul Barrett has been working on
unifying the interface between AFM (postscript) and truetype fonts,
but we're not there yet.  When this is done, it will be easier to
rewrite mathtext to work with either kind of font.  Another
possibility is to modify the postscript backend to use postscript
level 3, which supports truetype fonts.  This would be very nice
because it would improve compatibility between the postscript, image
and GUI backends.

Another thing that needs to be done is to add image support to the
postscript backend (draw_image).  This shouldn't be too hard.  The
matplotlib freetype module ft2font has a method to get the font raster
as a bitmap, which could be placed on the PS canvas with draw_image.
This wouldn't be an ideal solution because it's not scalable, but it
would be a fairly easy temporary solution.

Volunteers welcome!
JDH