font_manager.py UnicodeDecodeError when starting ipython --pylab - #2307

Seems this can be fixed by changing line 398 from
sfnt4 = sfnt4.decode('ascii').lower()
to
sfnt4 = sfnt4.decode('ascii', 'ignore').lower()

however I'm not sure if this results in any side effects.

@cycomanic: Can you confirm this patch resolves your issue?

This may also fix #2320.

Thanks -- it was helpful to know the problematic font. It contains a non-ascii character as its name -- according to this (http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/reference/ft2-truetype_tables.html#TT_MAC_ID_XXX), that entry is supposed to be "macroman" and not "ascii", so I've updated matplotlib to reflect that.

I will try later tonight.

Cheers
Jochen

On 27/08/13 04:26, Michael Droettboom wrote:

@cycomanic: Can you confirm this patch resolves your issue?

This may also fix #2320.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#2307 (comment)

👍 Tried it, works! (See #2320 (comment))

I am having the same issue where my software package employs matplotlib1.3.0. We are almost about to release and I was hoping that you could confirm that in fact, the ONLY change needed to fix this issue is the movement of 'ascii' to 'macroman' in those two locations in font_manager.py.

BTW, we have a ton of harness tests across a myriad of languages and this solution had worked for us in regards to fixing the traceback. I am just being extra cautious. Thanks for the heads up ahead of time.
Cheers,

MJ