Re: [matplotlib-devel] Subsetting fonts in Postscript

[John H. <jd...@gm...>]

On 7/5/07, Michael Droettboom <md...@st...> wrote:


> Do you agree that it is still an open question whether it's better to
> spend time improving the matplotib PS backend, or to fix (if possible)
> the issues with matplotlib's Cairo integration?  It does ultimately come
> down to a tradeoff: an additional dependency vs. extra maintenance

The postscript backend as it stands is in good shape, and is full
featured (Darren can tell you how much work he has put into supporting
and enhancing the latex support).  The last major issue with it is the
font size issue, and with your help a solution is on the horizon.  So
it is definitely a good use of time to fix this last bit.  It doesn't
sound like your "option 2" is a ton of work, but correct me if I'm
wrong.

While I would love to see cairo become a full featured backend, and
for there to be additional GUI support like tkcairo, wxcairo, etc, we
are a lot farther from that goal than we are to getting the font sizes
down in the existing postscript backend.  And I like the fact the mpl
is completely BSD-ish -- relying on a core component which is LGPL
would be a step back in my book, though having it as an option would
be great.

http://www.scipy.org/License_Compatibility

> burden.  Maybe it would be a good start to enumerate the Cairo backend's
> current shortcomings.

As a start, you might try adding cairo to the list of backends in
examples/backend_driver.py and see if everything passes, and take a
look at the generated images, eg compared to those of Agg, and see if
you identify any other discrepancies.  Steve Chaplin who wrote the
cairo backend can also elaborate.

> (So far I've seen some minor text bugs, and math
> rendering is raster dumps.)

Do you mean mathtext or usetex? - The former is mpl's own math layout
using the cm*.ttf files, and should work like any other text in the
file.  The latter uses tex and dvipng rasters (at least in agg), but I
don't think it is supported in cairo.  So I am not sure where these
rasters are coming from, unless cairo is converting all text to
rasters.

JDH