René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"macosx backend doesn't find fonts the same way as other backends","articleBody":"All of the other backends appear to use `matplotlib.font_manager.findfont()` to look up the path for a given font file to use. However, the macosx backend has its own font-lookup mechanism: `src/_macosx.m` line 2256, `setfont()`.\n\nThis mechanism is essentially an odd way to look up the pre-defined PS fonts, and in particular:\n1. looks only at the font-family name, and does not defer to font-family preference lists from rcParams, such as \"font.sans-serif\" etc.\n2. does not take any properties into account except for a weight that is exactly \"bold\" or a variant that is exactly \"italic\".\n\nIt is possible to get this font-lookup to find an arbitrary font by passing a PS-style name such as \"MyriadPro-Semibold\" as the font-family, but this doesn't work for other backends. (`findfont()` requires the semibold to be passed in as a weight property, not the family name, even though the eventual file returned is named \"MyriadPro-Semibold.otf\")\n\nThere are several possible solutions; I'm not sure which is best:\n1. make `findfont()` look up fonts by fully-qualified name such as \"MyriadPro-Semibold\", so that this style could be used for all backends.\n2. make a function to return a compatible name for a given font found by `findfont()`. Perhaps this would just be the filename (sans extension) from the path returned by `findfont`?\n3. fix `src/_macosx.m:setfont()` to load a font from a path passed in. I get the feeling that this isn't exactly the \"encouraged\" way to deal with fonts on OS X though...\n\nThe downside of using `findfont()`, and why I presume the macosx backend doesn't, is that FreeType2 (and thus  `findfont()`) can't deal with dfont and other font suitcase types, which can be easily loaded by the cocoa font-lookup routines in _macosx.m. But using such fonts results in the case where one can display a plot on OS X, but saving it creates an error. \n\nAny thoughts? Would it be better to funnel things through `findfont()` for consistency, at the cost of not being able to use some of the basic fonts on OS X (Helvetica, Courier, etc., are all dfonts -- but hence couldn't be used for figure-saving anyway)? That's option 2 or 3. Or better to leave OS X as it is, and just let other backends look up available fonts by filename too? (Option 1)\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/zpincus","@type":"Person","name":"zpincus"},"datePublished":"2012-03-21T15:05:15.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":5},"url":"https://github.com/781/matplotlib/issues/781"}