Use text but not marker in matplotlib legend

Question

I am using FontAwesome in my chart, and each data point is a symbol in FontAwesome font, displaying like an icon. Therefore, in the legend, I would like to use text (symbols

Answer 1

Thanks for ImportanceOfBeingErnest's answer, I update his solution a little bit to generate Text in the legend handler:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.legend_handler import HandlerBase
import matplotlib.font_manager as fm
from matplotlib.text import Text

class TextLegend(object):
    def __init__(self, icon, color, **kwargs):
        self.icon = icon
        self.color = color
        self.kwargs = kwargs

class TextLegendHandler(HandlerBase):
    def create_artists(self, legend, orig_handle, xdescent, ydescent,
                       width, height, fontsize, trans):
        x = xdescent + width / 2.0
        y = ydescent + height / 2.0
        kwargs = {
            'horizontalalignment': 'center',
            'verticalalignment': 'center',
            'color': orig_handle.color,
            'fontproperties': fm.FontProperties(fname='FontAwesome.otf', size=fontsize)
        }
        kwargs.update(orig_handle.kwargs)
        annotation = Text(x, y, orig_handle.icon, **kwargs)
        return [annotation]

ax = plt.gca()
ax.axis([0, 3, 0, 3])
prop = fm.FontProperties(fname='FontAwesome.otf', size=18)
ax.text(x=0, y=0, s='\uf1c7', color='r', fontproperties=prop)
ax.text(x=2, y=0, s='\uf050', color='g', fontproperties=prop)

plt.legend(
    handles=[TextLegend(color='r', icon='\uf1c7'), TextLegend(color='g', icon='\uf050')], 
    labels=['cat1', 'cat2'], 
    handler_map={TextLegend: TextLegendHandler()}
)
plt.show()