Light font variants cannot be accessed by common name #4822

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1. WeatherGod commented on Jul 29, 2015

   

   WeatherGod

   on Jul 29, 2015

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   It might be that you need to clear your matplotlib font cache.

   On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 4:05 PM, Edwin Chan [email protected]
   wrote:

   The following Ubuntu fonts are installed on my system:

   /home/edwin/.fonts/Ubuntu-LI.ttf: Ubuntu,Ubuntu Light:style=Light Italic,Italic
   /home/edwin/.fonts/Ubuntu-L.ttf: Ubuntu,Ubuntu Light:style=Light,Regular
   /home/edwin/.fonts/Ubuntu-M.ttf: Ubuntu,Ubuntu Light:style=Medium,Bold
   /home/edwin/.fonts/Ubuntu-BI.ttf: Ubuntu:style=Bold Italic
   /home/edwin/.fonts/Ubuntu-RI.ttf: Ubuntu:style=Italic
   /home/edwin/.fonts/Ubuntu-R.ttf: Ubuntu:style=Regular
   /home/edwin/.fonts/Ubuntu-MI.ttf: Ubuntu,Ubuntu Light:style=Medium Italic,Bold Italic
   /home/edwin/.fonts/Ubuntu-B.ttf: Ubuntu:style=Bold

   Ubuntu Light is shown with two family names: Ubuntu and Ubuntu Light. In
   XeTeX I can select the font directly by naming 'Ubuntu Light', but I cannot
   do the same in matplotlib:

   matplotlib.rcParams['font.family'] = 'Ubuntu Light'

   Instead, I must use a more obscure (albeit more technically correct)
   method:

   matplotlib.rcParams['font.family'] = 'Ubuntu'
   matplotlib.rcParams['font.weight'] = 200

   It would be convenient if Ubuntu Light could be addressed directly by its
   'common' name.

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   #4822.
2. tacaswell

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   on Jul 29, 2015
3. EdwinChan commented on Jul 29, 2015

   

   EdwinChan

   on Jul 29, 2015

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   @WeatherGod That was the first thing I tried; before doing that, I couldn't even load the plain Ubuntu font.
4. WeatherGod commented on Aug 7, 2015

   

   WeatherGod

   on Aug 7, 2015

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   I am wondering if this is addressed by #4689

   On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 6:05 PM, Edwin Chan [email protected]
   wrote:

   @WeatherGod https://github.com/WeatherGod That was the first thing I
   tried; before doing that, I couldn't even load the plain Ubuntu font.

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   #4822 (comment)
   .
5. tacaswell

   added this to the proposed next point releaseThis milestone has been deleted milestone on Aug 14, 2015
6. EdwinChan commented on Aug 14, 2015

   

   EdwinChan

   on Aug 14, 2015

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   @WeatherGod Apparently not, according to testing I did with the commit. I'm not an expert in the code, so I'm just reporting my observations below and making educated guesses.

   The patch you mentioned seems to be about font family aliasing. The font Ubuntu-L.ttf is only known to matplotlib as Ubuntu (this being, for example, the value of family2 in FontManager.score_family()), not Ubuntu Light, so the issue of aliasing doesn't apply here.

   The two relevant parameters considered by the scoring algorithm in this case is family and weight. If I just say

   matplotlib.rcParams['font.family'] = 'Ubuntu Light'
   

   the algorithm tries to find a font called Ubuntu Light at 400 weight. The font VeraSe.ttf has name Bitstream Vera Serif and weight 400, while the font Ubuntu-L.ttf has name Ubuntu and weight 200; as a result, and somewhat illogically, the algorithm finds a better match in the first font. But since the score is 10 because of a mismatch in family name, the algorithm gives up anyway and falls back to the default font, which is Bitstream Vera Sans.
7. QuLogic commented on May 15, 2017

   

   QuLogic

   on May 15, 2017

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   Might be related to #8551 or #8587.
8. tacaswell

   modified the milestones: 2.1 (next point release)This milestone has been deleted, 2.2 (next next feature release)This milestone has been deleted on Oct 3, 2017
9. anntzer commented on Jan 14, 2018

   

   anntzer

   on Jan 14, 2018

   Last edited by anntzer

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   It is indeed similar to the font weight retrieval issue: a ttf file can have its name stored in a bunch of different places and we currently only check for one of them (https://cgit.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/tree/src/fcfreetype.c#n1368 for all places where fontconfig looks).

   In the specific case of Ubuntu-L, "Ubuntu" is the TT_NAME_ID_FONT_FAMILY whereas "Ubuntu Light" is the TT_NAME_ID_TYPOGRAPHIC_FAMILY.

   Fixing this will require either depending on fontconfig or extracting all the names ourselves, which is unlikely to happen before 2.2...
10. anntzer

    modified the milestones: v2.2This milestone has been deleted, v3.0This milestone has been deleted on Jan 14, 2018
11. tacaswell

    modified the milestones: v3.0, v3.1 on Aug 11, 2018
12. anntzer

    removed this from the v3.1.0 milestone on Feb 25, 2019
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15. github-actions commented on May 1, 2024

    

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    This issue has been marked "inactive" because it has been 365 days since the last comment. If this issue is still present in recent Matplotlib releases, or the feature request is still wanted, please leave a comment and this label will be removed. If there are no updates in another 30 days, this issue will be automatically closed, but you are free to re-open or create a new issue if needed. We value issue reports, and this procedure is meant to help us resurface and prioritize issues that have not been addressed yet, not make them disappear. Thanks for your help!
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17. liuzhenqi77 commented on May 1, 2024

    

    liuzhenqi77

    on May 1, 2024

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    Guess still persists?
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19. anntzer commented on May 1, 2024

    

    anntzer

    on May 1, 2024

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    I think this is fairly actionable and self-contained, so labeling as good first issue, although fixing this will require being able to read some C and learning about font metadata (I can't provide any help on that), thus medium difficulty. The fixes are

    • Port fontconfig's font family name extractor to python and make (a variant of) ttfFontProperty report all family names for a font, so that we can record each of them in the json fontlist.
    • Port fontconfig's stretch (weight) detector to python and use it similarly to what I did for the weights.
20. anntzer

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    Difficulty: Mediumhttps://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/contribute.html#good-first-issueshttps://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/contribute.html#good-first-issues

    🌱 Good first issueOpen a pull request against these issues if there are no active ones!Open a pull request against these issues if there are no active ones!

    on May 1, 2024
21. github-actions commented on May 1, 2024

    

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    Good first issue - notes for new contributors

    This issue is suited to new contributors because it does not require understanding of the
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22. QuLogic commented on Apr 11, 2026

    

    QuLogic

    on Apr 11, 2026

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    This was fixed by #31183.
23. QuLogic

    closed this as completedon Apr 11, 2026
24. QuLogic

    modified the milestones: future releases, v3.11.0 on Apr 11, 2026
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