When I figured out that OpenType fonts wouldn't work, I found LucidaBrightRegular.ttf in Java and tried to use it with

matplotlib.rcParams['font.family'] = 'Lucida Bright'
plt.title('abc [def](ghi)')

(I actually need this for something like plt.xlabel('length [cm]').)

But this is what I get in PDF, the closing parenthesis are rotated and displaced (or maybe the wrong symbol is used):

while PNG and native GUI on Mac OS X work fine. I'm using the latest matplotlib (9fea430) with Python 3.3.

Related issue: #2869