Package: rsmf
rsmf (right-size my figures)When I am writing a paper I am a bit picky about the figures. It is especially important for me that the fonts and font sizes match the surrounding document. As I usually plot with matplotlib I created this library to help with that. This library provides a means to
automatically adjust figure sizes and font sizes in matplotlib to fit the ones in commonly used scientific journals. Currentlyquantumarticleandrevtex4are supported.InstallYou can get the latest release version from PyPI.pipinstallrsmfTo get the latest development version you have to install the package from GitHub.pipinstallgit+https://www.github.com/johannesjmeyer/rsmfThe package depends on matplotlib's PGF backend. To be able to use it, you need to have a working TeX distribution withpdflatexinstalled (see furtherIssue #2).UsageA detailed explanation of usage is given in thedocs.SetupYou need to tell rsmf how you set up your document by invokingrsmf.setup. This can be done in two ways. Either, you give rsmf the\documentclassstring used for setting up the document, as inimportrsmfformatter=rsmf.setup(r"\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,noarxiv]{quantumarticle}")Therin front of the string is necessary so that\dis not mistaken for an escape sequence. If you have your document stored locally, there is an even more convenient way:
you can just supply rsmf with the path to your main tex file (the one containing the document setup) and it will find that out for itself:formatter=rsmf.setup("example.tex")This is especially cool because rsmf will automatically adjust the plots when the underlying document class is changed without any needs to change python code! This makes swapping journals a lot easier.If the document class you're targeting is not supported byrsmf, you can still use it. In that case you have to extract the relevant measurements yourself and usersmf.CustomFormatter. A detailed explanation is given in thedocs.FiguresThe setup routine will return a formatter. This formatter can then be used to create matplotlib figure objects by invoking the methodformatter.figure. It has three arguments:aspect_ratio(float, optional): the aspect ratio (width/height) of your plot. Defaults to the golden ratio.width_ratio(float, optional): the width of your plot in multiples of\columnwidth. Defaults to 1.0.wide(bool, optional): indicates if the figures spans two columns in twocolumn mode,
i.e. if the figure* environment is used, has no effect in onecolumn mode . Defaults to False.This is the place where you set the width of your plots,not in the LaTeX document.If you include the resulting figure with a different width, the font sizes will not match the surrounding document!For example, a regular figure is created viafig=formatter.figure(aspect_ratio=.5)# ... some plotting ...plt.savefig("example.pdf")and included via\begin{figure}\centering\includegraphics{example}\caption{...}\end{figure}A wide figure that spans 80% of the page on the other hand is created byfig=formatter.figure(width_ratio=.8,wide=True)# ... some plotting ...plt.savefig("example_wide.pdf")and included via the multi-columnfigure*environment:\begin{figure*}\centering\includegraphics{example_wide}\caption{...}\end{figure*}Note that you should always save your figures in some sort of vectorized format, likepdfand that callingplt.tight_layout()before saving usually makes your plots nicer.It is also possible to create the figure objects by hand, usingformatter.columnwidthandformatter.wide_columnwidth, theformatter.figureroutine is a convenience wrapper around this.Other featuresYou can access the underlying fontsizes viaformatter.fontsizes. The nomenclature follows that of LaTeX itself, so we have e.g.formatter.fontsizes.tinyorformatter.fontsizes.Large.
This is especially useful if you want to tweak titles, legends and annotations while still having matching fontsizes.Using rsmf with other frameworksYou can use rsmf together with your favorite plotting framework, for exampleseaborn. There is only one catch: if you use matplotlib styles or seaborn styles, you might overwrite the settings imposed by rsmf, especially regarding fontsize. To this end, the formatters have a methodformatter.set_default_fontsizesthat only change the underlying fontsizes. An example use would befig=formatter.figure(wide=True)sns.set(style="ticks")formatter.set_default_fontsizes()# ... some plotting ...Sometimes these styles also overwrite other things, like the font family (serif/sans-serif). There is no correction method for that yet.ExampleAn example document alongside with a notebook for making the plots used can be found in theexamplesfolder.How it worksUnder the hood, rsmf sets the matplotlib backend topgf, which allows the use of LaTeX. For each supported document class, the specific column widths and font sizes are stored in code, alongside with packages that are loaded that change fonts. Forquantumarticle, for example, the packagelmodernis loaded into thepgfbackend to get the right sans-serif font.When callingrsmf.setup, matplotlib'srcParamsare adjusted to make the fontsizes match the surrounding document. Note thatformatter.figuredoes not mess withrcParams.ContributeDo you have trouble setting up plots for your favorite document class and it is not supported here? Do not hesitate to make a PR!A big thanks for contributions goes to:Samuel J. Palmer