matplotlib-devel Mailing List for matplotlib

Darren Dale wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 August 2007 4:20:08 pm Michael Droettboom wrote:
>> Darren Dale wrote:
>>> If you want all that flexibility, why not do it in the usual way:
>>>
>>> #mathtext.it.family : 'serif'
>>> #mathtext.it.style : 'oblique'
>> That seems reasonable. I think I had a mental block around this because
>> of the verbosity (and seeing a font specification as a single unit), but
>> it does seem to fit in much better with the existing options (i.e. a
>> subset of font.*).
>>
>> *IF* fontconfig is ever adopted, we could use fontconfig patterns as an
>> alternative, which are at least some kind of standard.
> 
> Right: 
> 
> mathtext.it : serif-12:italic # use the default serif, 12 pt italic
> or
> mathtext.it : times:italic # use the times italic font, default size
> 
> Could this syntax be adopted, even without fontconfig? Then if we decided to 
> use fontconfig in the future, the disruption would not be too great.
Sure, it's certainly an easy enough format to support.
Of course, the matching algorithm used by font_manager.py is different 
from fontconfig. font_manager.py essentially looks for an exact match 
or falls back to a single default. fontconfig does a nearest neighbor 
search, so often finds a better alternative. So even if they use the 
same syntax, the results will be different (in some side cases) if we 
ever move over to fontconfig. (There are pros and cons to using 
fontconfig already discussed on this list. I'm not really advocating 
for or against it myself.)
Still, IMHO, it's worth supporting this syntax now even though users may 
need to change their font specifiers later -- those changes should be 
more minor than if we go with
#mathtext.it.family : 'serif'
#mathtext.it.style : 'oblique'
now.
If we go this way, it would also be worthwhile to support this syntax 
internally (anywhere a FontProperties object is currently accepted it 
could alternatively be a fontconfig string.)
Cheers,
Mike

On Wednesday 22 August 2007 4:20:08 pm Michael Droettboom wrote:
> Darren Dale wrote:
> > On Wednesday 22 August 2007 03:09:30 pm Michael Droettboom wrote:
> >> I realize it's hacky. The most obvious alternative is to expect a
> >> dictionary here, e.g.:
> >>
> >> rm = { 'family': ['serif'], 'style': 'oblique' }
> >>
> >> But that's less like the FontProperties constructor.
> >
> > Why do you say that? Here is the constructor:
> >
> > def __init__(self,
> > family = None,
> > style = None,
> > variant= None,
> > weight = None,
> > stretch= None,
> > size = None,
> > fname = None,
> > ):
> >
> > wouldnt FontProperties(**rm) work?
>
> Sure. I just meant that
>
> rm = { 'family': ['serif'], 'style': 'oblique' }
>
> is syntactically different from
>
> rm = FontProperties(['serif'], style='oblique')
>
> >> My goal was to
> >> make specifying fonts as similar as possible to the FontProperties
> >> object so the user doesn't have to learn a new syntax. Is there a
> >> better way to do this with Traits? Can the user specify the arguments
> >> (with keyword arguments) to a constructor?
> >
> > I think this is getting a little out of hand, isnt it?:
> >
> > #mathtext.cal : ['cursive']
> > #mathtext.rm : ['serif']
> > #mathtext.tt : ['monospace']
> > #mathtext.it : ['serif'], style='oblique'
> > #mathtext.bf : ['serif'], weight='bold'
> > #mathtext.sf : ['sans-serif']
> >
> > That means we have comma-separated strings for lists of fonts, but
> > bracket-enclosed comma-separated quoted strings for mathtext properties.
>
> Well, they are different beasts. The former only specifies a choice of
> families. The latter specifies a specific font. I didn't intend to
> invent something new for mathtext -- there were no other instances where
> a full set of font properties was required to specify a font. (Sure
> font.* is a sort of example of that, but it includes other things as
> well...)
>
> > If you want all that flexibility, why not do it in the usual way:
> >
> > #mathtext.it.family : 'serif'
> > #mathtext.it.style : 'oblique'
>
> That seems reasonable. I think I had a mental block around this because
> of the verbosity (and seeing a font specification as a single unit), but
> it does seem to fit in much better with the existing options (i.e. a
> subset of font.*).
>
> *IF* fontconfig is ever adopted, we could use fontconfig patterns as an
> alternative, which are at least some kind of standard.
Right: 
mathtext.it : serif-12:italic # use the default serif, 12 pt italic
or
mathtext.it : times:italic # use the times italic font, default size
Could this syntax be adopted, even without fontconfig? Then if we decided to 
use fontconfig in the future, the disruption would not be too great.
Darren