I am able to resolve the issue by undoing the changes made to dviread.py in #16476.

I cannot reproduce using either master or v3.2.2. Do you have a pristine matplotlibrc?

Can you try clearing ~/.cache/matplotlib/tex.cache?

My guess is that across that version upgrade we changed the baseline, the output of latex changed, but the hash we use to name the files did not. Thus you are seeing a miss-match between where the code that places the image of the text on the output thinks the output is vs where the code that generates the output thought it should have been.

Guess was wrong.

• The issue persists after wiping my matplotlib cache directory and restarting the kernel
• I found that the issue was resolved by removing this snippet: \usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor} from my latex preamble in matplotlibrc. However, I would like not to lose this functionality. Is there any alternative solution that allows me to both use latex and also change text colour inside equations?

I suspect that we will need to make the logic divread.py more sophisticated to cope with what ever changes xcolor adds?

attn @anntzer

For completeness the minimal repro case is

plt.rcParams.find_all('preamble')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.rcParams['text.latex.preamble'] = r'\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}'
plt.rcParams['text.usetex'] = True
plt.scatter([0, 1, 2, 3], [2,3,1,6])
plt.show()

and I can reproduce the bug.

Thanks for the report. Looks like the following patch fixes the bug, can you confirm?

diff --git i/lib/matplotlib/dviread.py w/lib/matplotlib/dviread.py
index 6f65de52b..6b7b52dc1 100644
--- i/lib/matplotlib/dviread.py
+++ w/lib/matplotlib/dviread.py
@@ -313,18 +313,26 @@ class Dvi:
         #   xxx comment
         #   down
         #   push
-        #     down, down
+        #     down
+        #     <push, push, xxx, right, xxx, pop, pop>  # if using xcolor
+        #     down
         #     push
         #       down (possibly multiple)
         #       push  <=  here, v is the baseline position.
         #         etc.
         # (dviasm is useful to explore this structure.)
+        # Thus, we use the vertical position at the first time the stack depth
+        # reaches 3, while at least three "downs" have been executed, as the
+        # baseline (the "down" count is necessary to handle xcolor).
+        downs = 0
         self._baseline_v = None
         while True:
             byte = self.file.read(1)[0]
             self._dtable[byte](self, byte)
+            downs += self._dtable[byte].__name__ == "_down"
             if (self._baseline_v is None
-                    and len(getattr(self, "stack", [])) == 3):
+                    and len(getattr(self, "stack", [])) == 3
+                    and downs >= 4):
                 self._baseline_v = self.v
             if byte == 140:                         # end of page
                 return True

I can confirm that the patch fixes the issue for me. thanks for the quick response!

@darthoctopus Would you be interested in opening a PR with that patch and a test?