When you try to display Chinese or other non-ascii characters in matplotlib, your characters may not be displayed properly, like following figure:
It is because the fonts used by matplotlib couldn’t decode the characters properly. To solve it, we should add the appropriate fonts and update matplotlib font cache.
- locate the matplotlib fonts folder:
import matplotlib
print(matplotlib.matplotlib_fname())this is the location of matplotlib config file, you will get something like …/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc
The font folder is …/matplotlib/mpl-data/fonts/ttf , put your ttf file there.
2. Get ttf from ttc file (skip if you have ttf file already)
For macOS, the system Chinese fonts is Heiti, which is embed in a ttc file (ttc is a collection of multiple ttf files). Get the system ttc file in /System/Library/Fonts/STHeiti Medium.ttc Copy this file out and convert it to ttf. Here is an online ttc converter:
https://transfonter.org/ttc-unpack
3. Rebuild the Matplotlib Cache
import matplotlib.font_manager
matplotlib.font_manager._rebuild()restart your Jupyter / ipython kernel, then test if matplotlib can load your font or not by the ttflist function of the font manager
[f for f in matplotlib.font_manager.fontManager.ttflist if 'Heiti' in f.name]change ‘Heiti’ to your own font name. If you see your fonts object above. You are ready to use the new fonts.
4. Using Appropriate Fonts in Matplotlib
matplotlib.rcParams['font.family'] = ['Heiti TC']This will tell matplotlib to use the specific font as default, result as follow~
