scifont 0.1.2

Force publication-quality, editable fonts in Matplotlib figures.

scifont

Professional, Reproducible, and Editable Figures for Scientific Publishing.

scifont is a lightweight Python library designed to solve the two most persistent headaches in scientific visualization with Matplotlib:

1. Missing Fonts in Docker/Linux: "Arial" or "Times New Roman" are often missing in CI/CD environments or Linux servers, causing plots to fallback to default fonts.
2. Non-Editable Text: Default Matplotlib settings often export text as paths (shapes), making it impossible to correct typos or adjust formatting in Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.

🚀 Key Features

• Bundled Open-Source Fonts: We ship with Arimo and Tinos (Apache 2.0 Licensed). These are metric-compatible alternatives to Arial and Times New Roman. They are legally safe to distribute and use anywhere.
• Metric-Compatible: Arimo has the exact same character widths and spacing as Arial. Tinos matches Times New Roman. Your layout will remain identical to the proprietary versions.
• Editable Vector Graphics: Automatically configures Matplotlib to export PDFs as Type 42 objects and SVGs as <text> tags. Text remains editable in downstream vector software.
• Journal Presets: One-line configuration for Nature, Science, Cell, and IEEE standards.

📦 Installation

pip install scifont

(Or if installing from source)

git clone https://github.com/studentiz/scifont.git
cd scifont
pip install .

⚡ Quick Start

Simply import scifont and select your target journal style at the start of your script.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import scifont

# 1. Apply style (e.g., 'nature' for Life Sciences, 'ieee' for Engineering)
scifont.use('nature')

# 2. Plot as usual
plt.figure(figsize=(4, 3))
plt.plot([1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], label='Data')

# The font is now Arimo (Arial-compatible)
plt.title("Editable Text in Nature Style")
plt.xlabel("Time (s)")
plt.ylabel("Velocity (m/s)")
plt.legend()

# 3. Save
# The output PDF/SVG will have editable text!
plt.tight_layout()
plt.savefig("figure.pdf")
plt.savefig("figure.svg")

📖 Supported Journal Styles

scifont adjusts font families, sizes, and line widths according to specific journal guidelines (2025 standards).

Style Argument	Target Font Family	Open-Source Font Used	Base Font Size	Target Journals
'nature'	Sans-serif	Arimo (matches Arial)	7 pt	Nature, Nature Comms, Scientific Reports
'cell'	Sans-serif	Arimo (matches Arial)	8 pt	Cell, Molecular Cell, Neuron
'science'	Sans-serif	Arimo (matches Arial)	9 pt	Science, Science Advances
'ieee'	Serif	Tinos (matches Times New Roman)	8 pt	IEEE Transactions, Phys. Rev. Lett.

Note: You can override any setting (e.g., font size) using standard plt.rcParams after calling scifont.use().

🛡️ Why Open Source Fonts? (The Legal Aspect)

Many researchers are unaware that Arial and Times New Roman are proprietary fonts owned by Monotype.

1. Distribution: It is illegal to bundle arial.ttf inside a Python package and distribute it without a costly license.
2. Reproducibility: Reliance on system fonts leads to inconsistencies. A plot rendered on macOS (with Arial) looks different on Ubuntu (without Arial).

Our Solution: We bundle Arimo and Tinos, developed by Steve Matteson for Google.

• License: Apache License 2.0. You can use, bundle, and distribute them freely.
• Compatibility: They are designed to be Metric-Compatible with Arial and Times New Roman. This means if you replace Arial with Arimo, the text takes up the exact same space. No line breaks will change; no labels will be cut off.

🔧 Editable Text (Vector Graphics)

By default, scifont.use() applies the following hidden Matplotlib settings to ensure compatibility with Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, and Inkscape:

plt.rcParams['pdf.fonttype'] = 42  # Embbed TrueType fonts (editable)
plt.rcParams['ps.fonttype'] = 42
plt.rcParams['svg.fonttype'] = 'none' # Do not convert text to path

License

The scifont code is distributed under the MIT License. The bundled fonts (Arimo and Tinos) are distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.