Added functionality to set the font family for the Cairo device #145
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This PR partly solves IRkernel/IRkernel#604 .
As suggested in that issue, fonts for axes labels sometimes appear to have poor resolution. To resolve this, it is suggested in that issue to use the
Cairo
device, by settingoptions(bitmapType='Cairo')
in the startupargv
for the kernel (i.e. in thekernel.json
).This does indeed make sure that the
Cairo
device is used from that point onward. However, it will still use the default font. In my case that was a Helvetica, a (low-resolution) X11 font, and the resulting axes labels would still show the poor resolution.The solution is to use a vector-type font, such as
sans
. The problem is that forpng
plot types with theCairo
device, therepr.plot.family
is ignored.This PR makes sure that the font family specified in
repr.plot.family
is indeed set to theCairo
devices.I already suggested the change a long time ago but never found the time to make the change, test it, and PR it... In that thread, I proposed this approach to @flying-sheep who also considered it a good approach.
For me, with this PR, I can now do
and get:
While with
I get
These samples clearly show that the
repr.plot.family
is now respected.