Change font to Helvetica (Neue) in Linux

[gozzilli]

I'm unable to use the fonts Helvetica and Helvetica Neue in Ubuntu Linux.
I receive the error:

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib-1.3.0-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/matplotlib/font_manager.py:1236: 
UserWarning: findfont: Font family ['Helvetica Neue'] not found. Falling back to Bitstream Vera Sans

Note that:

1. I removed the font cache (but it never got regenerated. Could that be the problem?)
2. The same font on MacOS works fine with matplotlib.
3. I'm happy to attach the font if necessary (and if it's allowed)

matplotlib version: 1.3.0 and master (1.4.x)
ubuntu version: 13.04

I reported the steps I went through for troubleshooting on stackoverflow:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21461155/

In short:

import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.use('Agg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.font_manager as font_manager

path = '/home/<myusername>/.fonts/HelveticaNeue.ttf'

prop = font_manager.FontProperties(fname=path)
prop.set_weight = 'light'
mpl.rcParams['font.family'] = prop.get_name()
mpl.rcParams['font.weight'] = 'light'

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.set_title('Text in a cool font', fontproperties=prop, size=40)
plt.savefig('/tmp/test2.png')

[tacaswell]

@gozzilli Closing this as it has had no traffic in a year.

I suspect that the issue is related to needing to re-build your font cache.

Does this issue persist on the current release?

Ping to have this re-opened if you can still reproduce this issue.

[gozzilli]

@tacaswell Does the font cache matter when you are specifying a font's path directly?
Anyway, the problem does not persist on current release, so all good. Thanks!

[tacaswell]

Clearing the cache never hurts!

On Tue Feb 10 2015 at 10:25:32 AM Davide notifications@github.com wrote:

@tacaswell https://github.com/tacaswell Does the font cache matter when
you are specifying a font's path directly?
Anyway, the problem does not persist on current release, so all good.
Thanks!

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