Closed
Description
As far as I can see (and according to the documentation), the only way to set the font of mathtext snippets in plots is via the mathtext.fontset rcparam.
It would be nice if there were some way to control the fonts used for mathtext rendering without messing with the rcparams system. Maybe the font could be chosen based on the FontProperties instance associated with the Text object? To make a concrete example, it would be nice if the y label for this plot were rendered using a serif font, like the rest of the plot.
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.font_manager import FontProperties
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
fp = FontProperties(**{'family': 'stixgeneral'})
im = ax.imshow(np.random.random((800, 800)))
cb = fig.colorbar(im)
cbax = cb.ax
ax.set_xlabel('x label')
ax.set_ylabel(r'$\rm{y\ label}$')
cb.set_label('colorbar label')
labels = ax.xaxis.get_ticklabels() + ax.yaxis.get_ticklabels()
labels += cbax.yaxis.get_ticklabels()
labels += [ax.xaxis.label, ax.yaxis.label, cbax.yaxis.label]
for label in labels:
label.set_fontproperties(fp)
plt.savefig('test.png')For additional context, see #6514 and my message to the matplotlib-devel mailing list: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/matplotlib-devel/2016-May/000454.html