Text Baselines Comparison

Introduction

In this lab, we will compare the text baselines computed for mathtext and usetex using Matplotlib library. We will create a plot that contains two subplots, one with mathtext and the other with usetex. Each subplot will display four test strings with different styles and positions.

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Import the necessary libraries

We need to import the matplotlib.pyplot library to create the plot.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Set the Matplotlib font

We need to set the font to be used for Matplotlib text. We will use the Computer Modern font and set it as the default font for Matplotlib.

plt.rcParams.update({"mathtext.fontset": "cm", "mathtext.rm": "serif"})

Create the subplots

We will create a figure that contains two subplots, one with mathtext and the other with usetex. We will use the subplots() method to create the subplots.

fig, axs = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(2 * 3, 6.5))

Add test strings to the plot

We will add four test strings to each subplot, each with a different style and position. We will use the text() method to add the text to the subplots.

test_strings = ["lg", r"$\frac{1}{2}\pi$", r"$p^{3^A}$", r"$p_{3_2}$"]
for ax, usetex in zip(axs, [False, True]):
    ax.axvline(0, color="r")
    for i, s in enumerate(test_strings):
        ax.axhline(i, color="r")
        ax.text(0., 3 - i, s,
                usetex=usetex,
                verticalalignment="baseline",
                size=50,
                bbox=dict(pad=0, ec="k", fc="none"))

Set the plot limits and labels

We will set the plot limits and labels to match the desired output.

for ax in axs:
    ax.set(xlim=(-0.1, 1.1), ylim=(-.8, 3.9), xticks=[], yticks=[])
    ax.set_title(f"usetex={ax.usetex}\n")

Display the plot

We will display the plot using the show() method.

plt.show()

Summary

In this lab, we learned how to compare the text baselines computed for mathtext and usetex using Matplotlib. We created a plot that contained two subplots, one with mathtext and the other with usetex. We added four test strings to each subplot, each with a different style and position. Finally, we displayed the plot to compare the text baselines.