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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"[Feature Request] Better default font family that supports all unicode chars","articleBody":"\u003c!--\r\nWelcome! Thanks for thinking of a way to improve Matplotlib.\r\n\r\n\r\nBefore creating a new feature request please search the issues for relevant feature requests.\r\n--\u003e\r\n\r\n### Problem\r\n\r\n\u003c!--\r\nProvide a clear and concise description of the problem this feature will solve. \r\n\r\nFor example:\r\n* I'm always frustrated when [...] because [...]\r\n* I would like it if [...] happened when I [...] because [...]\r\n* Here is a sample image of what I am asking for [...]\r\n--\u003e\r\nI'm working with a dataset that contains lots of east Asian characters. When trying to plot the data, I got a flood of warnings like this: `RuntimeWarning: Glyph \u003cnumber\u003e missing from current font.\r\n  font.set_text(s, 0.0, flags=flags)`, and the generated plot had no readable texts.\r\n\r\nSince I'm new to matplotlib and was calling `plot` from a pandas `DataFrame`, I couldn't find a trivial way to get the chars displayed correctly. Some suggest downloading a font file and configuring the font family with the path to that file, all seems quite complicated and I couldn't figure how to do that directly from `DataFrame.plot` arguments.\r\n\r\nA few quick searches lead me to this issue from May 2019: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/14269#issuecomment-493898037\r\n\u003e That is because the default font (DejaVu Sans) does not have CJKV\r\n\r\nI don't think the current default font is a sensible choice since it only support latin characters.\r\n\r\n### Proposed Solution\r\n\r\n\u003c!-- Provide a clear and concise description of a way to accomplish what you want. For example:\r\n\r\n* Add an option so that when [...]  [...] will happen\r\n --\u003e\r\n- Dynamically determine the default font family by choosing from a list of available fonts that supports unicode characters.\r\n- Only fallback to font families with poor or no unicode support when no such fonts are available on users' system.\r\n- Allow people to work with matplotlib with minimal friction when it comes to unicode text or data.\r\n\r\n\r\n### Additional context and prior art\r\n\r\n\u003c!-- Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here. You can also include links to examples of other programs that have something similar to your request. For example:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n* Another project [...] solved this by [...]\r\n--\u003e\r\nWarning screenshot: \r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/45612704/118611466-73a21180-b7ef-11eb-9895-e3bb7d66c3b4.png)\r\n\r\nPlot generated:\r\n![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/45612704/118619214-f5e20400-b7f6-11eb-824e-c514e208bed6.png)\r\n\r\n\r\nmatplotlib version: 3.4.2 (from conda-forge)\r\nOS: macOS 11.3.1","author":{"url":"https://github.com/tddschn","@type":"Person","name":"tddschn"},"datePublished":"2021-05-18T07:49:54.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":13},"url":"https://github.com/20251/matplotlib/issues/20251"}