Matplotlib text rendering with LaTeX with arbitrary string

Question

Matplotlib is capable of parsing latex strings and displaying (to some extent) LaTeX math expressions. It also has a built in "math mode" which similarly displays nice-looking math expressions. To do this one places an r in front of the string, outside the quotes. An example of annotating a plot would be,

plt.xlabel(r'\textbf{time} (s)')

My understanding is that the r allows for proper escaping of special commands or characters like \textbf or \alpha.

How do I do this when I'm not writing the string in my code? I'm reading a Gtk.Entry to get the string I want and I want to give that string to matplotlib to be interpreted as a LaTeX string. In the example above I would instead have,

string = Gtk.Entry.get_text()
plt.xlabel(r+string)              #how would I write this part?

Any help would be lovely.

The r tells python to not treat the '\' as an escape in the string literal or you would have to write \\textbf{time} (s) where the first '\' escapes the second (or the string literal wolud be '[tab]extbf{time} (s)'). If you have a string from Gtk it should 'just work'. — tacaswell
– tacaswell, Commented Nov 18, 2015 at 0:08
annoyingly backslash also escapes the flavor of md that SO uses. — tacaswell
– tacaswell, Commented Nov 18, 2015 at 0:09
I don't understand your second comment. Could you elaborate? I tried using double backslash, i.e., ax.text(0, 0.9,'\\textbf{hello}', transform=ax.transAxes, usetex=True) but got a runtime error, 'RuntimeError: In select_charmap: Could not set the charmap'. EDIT: I also tried handing the Gtk.Entry.get_text() to ax.text() with the option usetex=True and got the same runtime error. I can give you the full trace if necessary. — wrkyle
– wrkyle, Commented Nov 18, 2015 at 9:14
Oh, SO=stack overflow, never mind, I understand your second comment now. I do, however, still have my runtime error. Any help would be great. — wrkyle
– wrkyle, Commented Nov 18, 2015 at 9:21
The runtime error disappears when I place a string inside of $$. If I do not include these I get the runtime error above. Is this expected and intentional behaviour? — wrkyle
– wrkyle, Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 17:39

wrkyle · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-28 05:34:50Z

1

Okay, so it turns out that the problem was that, like LaTeX, math needs to be in the math environment by bracketing the text with $insert math here$.

answered Dec 28, 2015 at 5:34

wrkyle

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kikocorreoso · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-17 15:39:26Z

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As the tags indicates Python-3.x I think you could do something like:

plt.xlabel(mystring.encode('unicode_escape').decode('utf'))

being mystring the value returned by Gtk.Entry.get_text() and being mystring a str instance in Python3.

answered Nov 17, 2015 at 15:39

kikocorreoso

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