[SOLVED] Strange output from matplotlib mathtext

Issue

I tried to use mathtext to get a specially rendered figure title, but it failed. Instead of my test title it just printed cryptic characters. What am I doing wrong?

• Operating System: Fedora release 18 (Spherical Cow)
• Python and matplotlib are installed from official repositories via yum

Here's the (full) code:

import sys
print sys.version             # prints:
                              # 2.7.3 (default, Aug  9 2012, 17:23:57)
                              # [GCC 4.7.1 20120720 (Red Hat 4.7.1-5)]
import matplotlib
print matplotlib.__version__  # prints:
                              # 1.2.0

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([1,5])
plt.title(r"$1.2345$")
plt.show()

Here's the output image:

Solution

Apparantly it was a font-related thing. Found an old bug-report to address the issue.

A suggestion in one of the comments was to install the package lyx-fonts. This solved the problem for me.

---

Another workaround proposed here is to configure the mathtext rendering like this (at the top of the script):

plt.rcParams['mathtext.fontset'] = "stix"

Answered By - moooeeeep

Answer Checked By - Marilyn (WPSolving Volunteer)