Changing the font type

[ryansohny]

Hi, thank you for this amazing and super-light tool.

I'm using pyGenomeTracks version 3.8 and I'm wondering if I can change the font type, say from default font type into Arial type.

Thank you.
Sohn

[lldelisle]

For the moment we cannot.
But this feature should not be difficult to implement.
To myself:
This would be a new argument to the command line and we would use it here:

pyGenomeTracks/pygenometracks/tracksClass.py

Lines 330 to 331 in b8918d4

	font = {'size': fontsize}
	matplotlib.rc('font', **font)

I think the parameter should be font.family: https://matplotlib.org/stable/tutorials/text/text_props.html#default-font

@ryansohny, you can check which are the font.families available on your computer by running:

python -c "import matplotlib.font_manager;print(matplotlib.font_manager.get_font_names())"

[ryansohny]

Thanks for the quick and thoughful reply, Delisle.
I managed to change the font in the figure, following your advice.

#In tracksClass.py line 330:
font = {'size': fontsize, 'family': 'arial'} #Added 'family' key

Thank you again

Best regards
Sohn

[lldelisle]

I will keep it open until I implemented it as it is a good idea of improvement

[rikrdo89]

I have pgt installed through conda, and when changing the fonts as @ryansohny suggested, I got this error:
matplotlib.font_manager:findfont: Font family 'arial' not found

Any ideas how we can import the arial font type?

[ryansohny]

Ricardo, I would first install mscorefonts in that virtual environment though anaconda. And then if that doesn’t work out either, I think you need to delete your matpltlib json file.

Linux: rm ~/.cache/matplotlib/fontlist*.json
M1 mac: rm ~/Library/Caches/matplotlib/fontlist*.json

Hope for the best

[rikrdo89]

thanks a lot, that solved my issue!