R Shiny server not rendering correct ggplot font family

Question

I\'m trying to apply a nice font to a ggplot rendered in a Shiny app.

Setting the desired font in RStudio (on the same server) using family=\"[fontname]\" works cor

Answer 1

As a workaround, I recreated much of the renderPlot() functionality using renderImage(), as described in this Shiny tutorial article. Happily this renders antialiased fonts galore. Hope this is of use to someone else.

ui.R amended to

    mainPanel(
      imageOutput("myImage")
    )

server.R

shinyServer(function(input, output, session) {

  # A dynamically-sized plot
  output$myImage <- renderImage({
    # Read myImage's width and height. These are reactive values, so this
    # expression will re-run whenever they change.
    width  <- session$clientData$output_myImage_width
    height <- session$clientData$output_myImage_height

    # For high-res displays, this will be greater than 1
    pixelratio <- session$clientData$pixelratio

    # A temp file to save the output.
    outfile <- tempfile(fileext='.png')

    # Generate the image file
    png(outfile, width=width*pixelratio, height=height*pixelratio,
        res=72*pixelratio)
    plot(rnorm(100), rnorm(100), family="serif")
    dev.off()

    # Return a list containing the filename
    list(src = outfile,
         width = width,
         height = height,
         alt = "This is alternate text")
  }, deleteFile = TRUE) # delete the temp file when finished

})