René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"[Bug]: Inconsistent pgf backend results from text.usetex flag","articleBody":"### Bug summary\n\nThe `text.usetex` rcParam flag can be used to enable [TeX rendering on all Text elements](https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/text/usetex.html) instead of [Mathtext](https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/text/mathtext.html).  When using the pgf backend, I would expect this flag to have no effect and for the Text elements to be rendered identically since [pgf also uses TeX to render](https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/text/pgf.html).\r\n\r\nThe problem is that the `usetex` renderer seems to have a different implementation than the `pgf` renderer.\n\n### Code for reproduction\n\n```Python\nimport matplotlib.pyplot as plt\r\nimport matplotlib as mpl\r\n\r\nmpl.use('pgf')\r\nplt.rcParams.update({\r\n    'figure.dpi': 400,\r\n    'text.usetex': True, # TODO: comment this out to get different results\r\n    'ytick.labelsize': 1,\r\n    })\r\n\r\n# Create the figure and axis objects\r\nfig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(2, 1.5))\r\n\r\n# Plot the data\r\nx = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]\r\ny = [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]\r\nax.plot(x, y)\r\n\r\n# Set the title and axis labels\r\nax.set_title('My Plot')\r\nax.set_xlabel('X-axis')\r\nax.set_ylabel('Y-axis')\r\n\r\n# Save the plot to a file\r\nplt.savefig('my_plot.png')\r\nplt.savefig('my_plot.pgf')\n```\n\n\n### Actual outcome\n\nWhen `text.usetex` is `True`, the tick labels use display math font to render in Tex.\r\nWhen `text.usetex` is `False`, the tick labels use the regular text font to render in Tex.\n\n### Expected outcome\n\nWhen using the pgf backend, I would expect enabling/disabling `text.usetex` to have no effect on the output.\n\n### Additional information\n\nFrom what I understand, the `text.usetex` implementation has an unofficially supported rcParam for the preamble named `text.latex.preamble`.  On the other hand, the pgf implementation has an officially supported rcParam for the preamble named `pgf.preamble`.  From the documentation it's unclear to me which renderer/preamble takes precedence when both pgf and `usetex` are enabled.\r\n\r\nThe `text.usetex` renderer also does not support XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX according to the documentation.\r\n\r\nIn conclusion:\r\nIs there any reason why these two rendering engines can not (or should not) be unified?  I suspect this is also the root cause of a lot of confusion and consistency errors people have.\r\n\r\nRelated:\r\nhttps://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/28084\n\n### Operating system\n\nUbuntu\n\n### Matplotlib Version\n\n3.7.5\n\n### Matplotlib Backend\n\npgf\n\n### Python version\n\n3.8.10\n\n### Jupyter version\n\n_No response_\n\n### Installation\n\npip","author":{"url":"https://github.com/voidstarstar","@type":"Person","name":"voidstarstar"},"datePublished":"2024-04-24T14:39:27.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":3},"url":"https://github.com/28131/matplotlib/issues/28131"}