[matplotlib-devel] AFM mathtext

Hi,

I regularly use matplotlib on lots of systems I don't have root access
to.  On most of these installation of gs 8.15 is quite problematic (and
buggy) and as I result using TeX with matplotlib is impractical.
Additionally as all of the printers I have access to are HP made the use
of embedded truetype fonts is also problematic.  The combination of
these two problems has made it difficult to use mpl for anything I need
to print and for which I need mathtext.

As a solution I've patched the mathtext library and backend_ps in order
to support mathtext based upon the standard postscript Symbol font when
ps.usetex = True.  A function patch to CVS is attached.

In addition to the expected limitations from using the standard fonts;
the character spacing in my output isn't perfect.  As I'm not
particularly knowledgeable regarding fonts I'd appreciate some
assistance in fixing this problem.  Once this problem is fixed I believe
that the result would be quite useful for those who want to produce
portable and small (in filesize) plots without the overhead of running
TeX.

Nick