René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Inconsistent behavior of backends when rendering latex colors","articleBody":"MPL 1.5.1 on Python 3.5 (Anaconda) running on Red Hat 6.5.\n\nThis issue is a followup to the discussion on matplotlib-users [Creating Colored Axis Labels using LaTeX in Interactive Mode](https://mail.python.org/pipermail/matplotlib-users/2016-July/000557.html), which in turn is a followup to Stack Overflow [Inconsistent rendering of hdashrule in matplotlib axis labels](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38274681/inconsistent-rendering-of-hdashrule-in-matplotlib-axis-labels).\n\nIn my attempts to get latex colors to show up correctly in axis labels using interactive backends with LaTeX enabled, I came across http://matplotlib.org/users/pgf.html. I expected to be able to do the following:\n\n```\nimport matplotlib as mpl\nfrom matplotlib.backends.backend_pgf import FigureCanvasPgf\nmatplotlib.backend_bases.register_backend('png', FigureCanvasPgf)\nfrom matplotlib import pyplot as plt\n\nmatplotlib.rc('pgf', texsystem='pdflatex')  # from running latex -v\npreamble = matplotlib.rcParams.setdefault('pgf.preamble', [])\npreamble.append(r'\\usepackage{color}')\npreamble.append(r'\\usepackage{dashrule}')\n\nax = plt.plot((0, 1), (1, 2))[0].axes\nax.set_ylabel(r'Y $\\;$ \\textcolor[rgb]{1.0, 0.0, 0.0}{\\hdashrule[0.5ex]{3cm}{1pt}{1pt 0pt}}')\nax.set_xlabel(r'N $\\;$ \\textcolor[rgb]{0.0, 1.0, 0.0}{\\rule[0.5ex]{3cm}{1pt}}')\nplt.savefig('test.png')\n```\n\nWith the default backend, this does not work at all, and the labels are rendered as raw strings containing TeX commands. With `mpl.use('pgf')`, the lines in the labels are rendered black instead of the intended color. Please see the SO question and mailing list discussion for more info.\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/madphysicist","@type":"Person","name":"madphysicist"},"datePublished":"2016-07-11T19:43:03.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":6},"url":"https://github.com/6724/matplotlib/issues/6724"}