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[Bug]: Font rendering bug for Devanagari text #23082
Description
Bug summary
When rendered as part of a graph's axis label or title, Devanagari text renders incorrectly: the "matras" get affixed to the wrong letters (see the attached image, and note the difference between the string literal in the code and the rendered text in the title of the graph).
Code for reproduction
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import matplotlib
matplotlib.rc('font', family='Devanagari Sangam MN')
matplotlib.rc('font', size=18)
plt.title('किसान')Actual outcome
Expected outcome
The rendered word should look the same as in the string literal in the code.
Additional information
No response
Operating system
macOS
Matplotlib Version
3.4.1
Matplotlib Backend
module://ipykernel.pylab.backend_inline
Python version
Python 3.9.12
Jupyter version
6.3.0
Installation
pip
Metadata
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Projects
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Activity
tacaswell commented on May 20, 2022
I'm going to start by apologizing that I know nothing more about Devanagari rendering than this issue and a very quick skimming of it's wikipedia entry.
It looks like the matras is a vowel diacritic that combines with the letter to its left, where as the other vowels appear below or to the right (ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari#Vowel_diacritics). Do these render correctly or are all vowels broken?
It also looks like there are also ligatures between some consonants, do those render correctly?
I am not sure off the top of my head if we are doing the detailed text layout here or freetype is, but it is clear that the diacritic is not being handled correctly.
A couple questions:
tacaswell commented on May 20, 2022
One more detail: we are rendering the text in the order it comes in in the string:
In [1]: list('किसान') Out[1]: ['क', 'ि', 'स', 'ा', 'न']kach commented on May 20, 2022
Hi Thomas,
No apology necessary, thank you for looking into this issue. :)
Your understanding is correct. All other vowels are fine. 'क' + 'ि' is "special" in the sense that the 'ि' needs to be rendered to the left of the 'क'.
The consonant-consonant ligatures "work" in the sense that they are not wrong, but not ideal. The Devanagari script has special ligatures for each pair of consonant-ligatures, but there is also a generic way to write them by adding the "halanth" diacritic ([्]) to the first consonant. Matplotlib seems to just use the generic form everywhere. See below (compare to the respective string literals in Python):
tacaswell commented on May 20, 2022
Looking at the last example , it looks like the shaping on 'ि' is such that it goes over a the whole ligature?
Unfortunately, I do not think this is going to be an easy fix (it is possible that we are clipping something to be positive that should be negative to move the diacritic to the left), but I suspect that our text system is not currently up to this.
kach commented on May 20, 2022
Hi Thomas,
You're right, the 'ि' should loop around the entire consonant cluster, though there are exceptions. For example, in मूर्ति the little arc above the त that makes it र्त should be "outside" the matra.
I do need to produce graphs with (correct) Devanagari labels on them. Do you have recommendations on how to proceed?
anntzer commented on May 20, 2022
Unless I am mistaken, this is basically a duplicate of #8765.
tacaswell commented on May 20, 2022
The fastest thing is probably to use mplcairo
I am not sure how hard it would be to get mplcairo to play nice with inline, but if you need to save the output you are good to go!
If you definitly need images in a notebook, I think the way to go is module://mplcairo.base and then rely on the repr of a Figure is a png of it it.
QuLogic commented on Apr 10, 2026
The text-overhaul branch is now merged to main.