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

For a solution using TextArea see this answer. You would then need to recreate the fontproperties for the text inside the TextArea.

Since here you want to show exactly the symbol you have as text also in the legend, a simpler way to create a legend handler for some text object would be the following, which maps the text to a TextHandler. The TextHandler subclasses matplotlib.legend_handler.HandlerBase and its create_artists produces a copy of the text to show in the legend. Some of the text properties then need to be adjusted for the legend.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.legend_handler import HandlerBase
import copy

ax = plt.gca()
ax.axis([-1, 3,-1, 2])

tx1 = ax.text(x=0, y=0, s=ur'$\u2660$', color='r',size=30, ha="right")
tx2 = ax.text(x=2, y=0, s=ur'$\u2665$', color='g',size=30)


class TextHandler(HandlerBase):
    def create_artists(self, legend, orig_handle,xdescent, ydescent,
                        width, height, fontsize,trans):
        h = copy.copy(orig_handle)
        h.set_position((width/2.,height/2.))
        h.set_transform(trans)
        h.set_ha("center");h.set_va("center")
        fp = orig_handle.get_font_properties().copy()
        fp.set_size(fontsize)
        # uncomment the following line, 
        # if legend symbol should have the same size as in the plot
        h.set_font_properties(fp)
        return [h]

labels = ["label 1", "label 2"]
handles = [tx1,tx2]
handlermap = {type(tx1) : TextHandler()}
ax.legend(handles, labels, handler_map=handlermap,) 

plt.show()

Also see this more generic answer

Answer 2

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()