Matplotlib cannot find basic fonts

Question

I am using matplotlib version 2.0.0 on Python 3 in a miniconda virtual environment. I am working on a unix scientific computing cluster where I don\'t have root privileges.

Answer 1

I am in macOS with jupyter notebook, I solved with the following, first close your jupyter notebook. Then find out the font path by doing the following in Python

import matplotlib
print(matplotlib.matplotlib_fname())

it prints /Users/zyy/anaconda2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc for me, notice matplotlibrc is a file, not a directory.

Then download font SimHei, and copy it to the directory fonts/ttf under the mpl-data/ directory above.

Delete directory ～/.cache/matplotlib and restart your jupyter notebook, everything should be good.