Matplotlib, Google Fonts: how to use fonts in vscode jupyter notebook

Question

I've searched for a while, trying to use Chinese font in my matplotlib histogram. Instead of installing the font locally, I tried to follow the post to use the raw TTF file from Github. However, I got In FT2Font: Can not load face. Unknown file format. In FT2Font: Can not load face. Unknown file format. message. Here is my code:

from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile
import urllib3
import matplotlib.font_manager as fm
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

https = urllib3.PoolManager()
github_url = 'https://github.com/google/fonts/tree/main/ofl/notosanssc/NotoSansSC[wght].ttf'

url = github_url + '?raw=true' # will trigger the download

response = https.request('GET', url)
# print(response.data) # to confirm the successful response with data
f = NamedTemporaryFile(delete=False, suffix='.ttf')
f.write(response.data)
f.close()
f.name # C:\\Users\\<username>\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tmp9i1czwm1.ttf'

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot([1, 2, 3])

prop = fm.FontProperties(fname=f.name)
ax.set_title('this is a special font:\n%s' % github_url, fontproperties=prop)
ax.set_xlabel('This is the default font')

plt.show()

Reinstalling matplotlib and removing cache gave me no luck. What could be the issue? Thanks.

Answer 1

I've figured it out using another way instead of Github Google font. There's also a post regarding using Chinese font with Mac . However, I am using Windows 10, which cannot replicate Mac's solution.

On Windows 10 (or 11), open Settings , Personalization , then fonts . Here you can confirm the installed fonts and available Chinese fonts. Next, go to matplotlib font cache, which could be C:\Users\<username>\.matplotlib . There's a file called fontlist-<version>.json , storing available fonts.

The format is:

{
  "_version": 330,
  "_FontManager__default_weight": "normal",
  "default_size": null,
  "defaultFamily": {
    "ttf": "DejaVu Sans",
    "afm": "Helvetica"
  },
  ttflist: [
    {
      "fname": "C:\\Windows\\Fonts\\FRABKIT.TTF",
      "name": "Franklin Gothic Book",
      "style": "italic",
      "variant": "normal",
      "weight": 400,
      "stretch": "normal",
      "size": "scalable",
      "__class__": "FontEntry"
    },
    "__class__": "FontManager"
  ]
}

Finally, you can set the font family with the name field. Below is the snippet:

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

fontP = matplotlib.font_manager.FontProperties()
fontP.set_family('DFKai-SB')

ax.set_title('職缺頻率計算', fontproperties=fontP)
plt.show()