ggplot embedded fonts in pdf

Question

I have been using the following guide to export plots made with ggplotto pdf: plot fonts guide

It raises the issue at the bottom of the post of some fonts not appearing as they should, which happens in my example below. The text in font Bauhaus 93 appears correctly whilst the text in Calibri is displayed incorrectly.

Has anyone found a way to resolve this issue?

library(ggplot2)
library(plyr)
library(grid)
library(gridExtra)
library(extrafont)

data1<-as.data.frame(1:5)
data1[,2]<-as.data.frame(c(1,3,5,7,9))
data1[,3]<-as.data.frame(c(2,4,6,8,10))
colnames(data1)<-c("x","y1","y2")

ggplot(data1, aes(x=x)) + 
  geom_line(aes(y = y1, colour = "Taux selon DEF"), size=0.61, colour="black") +  
  geom_line(aes(y = y2, colour = "Taux selon EC"), size=0.61, colour="black", linetype="dashed") + 
  xlab("X axis lab") + ylab("Y axis lab)") +
  annotate("text", x=1, y=4, label="Some text here", size=2, family="Bauhaus 93") +
  annotate("text", x=4, y=1, label="More text here", size=2, family="Calibri") +
  theme_bw() + theme(legend.title = element_blank(),
                     legend.key = element_rect(fill=NA),
                     panel.border = element_blank(), 
                     axis.line = element_line(colour="black", size=0.25),
                     axis.ticks = element_line(size=0.25),
                     panel.grid.major = element_line(colour = "grey80", size=0.25),
                     panel.grid.minor = element_line(colour = "grey80", size=0.25),
                     axis.text.x = element_text(size=5.5 , lineheight=0.9, hjust=0.5, family="Bauhaus 93"),
                     axis.text.y = element_text(size=5.5 , lineheight=0.9, vjust=0.5, family="Calibri"),
                     axis.title.y = element_text(size=6.1, angle=0, vjust=0.975, face="bold", family="Calibri"),
                     axis.title.x = element_text(size=6.1, angle=0, vjust=-0.20, face="bold", family="Calibri")) +
  scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0, 0), limits=c(0,5)) + 
  scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0, 0), limits=c(0,10)) +
  ggtitle("Title") +
  ggsave("Test.pdf", width=7, height=5)
Sys.setenv(R_GSCMD = "C:/Program Files (x86)/PDF24/gs/bin/gswin32.exe")
embed_fonts("Test.pdf")

Wilone

Initially I had the same error, but now I cannot reproduce it! What does the output of fonttable() look like? – Otha

The folowing output is given for the calibri family 65 Calibri Calibri FALSE FALSE FALSE NA 66 Calibri Calibri-Bold TRUE FALSE FALSE NA 67 Calibri Calibri-BoldItalic TRUE TRUE FALSE NA 68 Calibri Calibri-Italic FALSE TRUE FALSE NA 69 Calibri Light Calibri-Light FALSE FALSE FALSE NA 70 Calibri Light Calibri-LightItalic FALSE TRUE FALSE NA – Wilone

OK, I've been able to reproduce the problem on Windows: it produces a load of "font width unknown" warnings and all the Calibri characters are jumbled on top of each other. There are a number of related extrafont issues here: github.com/wch/extrafont/issues Apart from using a different font, I don't know what to suggest! – Otha

Ok, thanks for your efforts. I'll stick to using another font. – Wilone

Answer 1

Try adding device=cairo_pdf to the ggsave() call. This appears to solve the problem for me. This way, it's no longer necessary to use embed_fonts().

See mgaudet's comment here: https://github.com/wch/extrafont/issues/8

Otha

I also found that using device=cairo_pdf embeds the font, but this results in worse kerning – anyone know of a better solution? – Harlequinade

@user1092247 Perhaps the font you've requested doesn't have kerning support. Remember that kerning is done by the font designer, though some systems ignore this. – Clarion

Great answer. I found I had to increase the width and height arguments inside ggsave to get a result similar to what I used to get without device=cairo_pdf on my system before a clean-update to MacOS Sierra. – Abjure

Newer versions of R don't support cairo anymore, which gets you failed to load cairo DLL. Any new ideas how to solve this? – Diocese

@cw' Try installing the Cairo package and then use device = CarioPDF in your ggsave() call. On Windows it was straightforward. On Ubuntu it was necessary to install libharfbuzz-dev and libxt-dev before Cairo would compile. – Otha