Hi all,
After an extended development stretch, we are pleased to announce the
first release candidate of Matplotlib 3.11.0.
The largest change within this release is a complete overhaul of text
and font processing. Through the use of libraqm [1], HarfBuzz [2],
SheenBidi [3], and an updated release of FreeType [4], all text should
now support modern font features, enabling full internationalization
in all languages. Not all features of these libraries are supported
yet, but we expect this work to enable further improvements in an
easier manner. Due to the update to the font rendering stack, we
cannot guarantee that text will be bit-for-bit perfect with previous
releases, so if you are using Matplotlib for testing, it may be
necessary to introduce/raise a tolerance within your tests.
Outside of text handling, there are several improvements to 3D Axes,
performance, new accessible colour sequences, flexible figure
management, and more. Final release notes are still being curated, but
you may browse the list of new features at [5], API changes at [6],
and all issues/pull requests on the milestone at [7].
Pre-built wheels are available for most major platforms, and can be
installed using `pip install matplotlib==3.11.0rc1`. Other packages
may also be available already; please check with your preferred
source.
As a note for downstream packagers, the font libraries have only been
tested against the versions bundled with the wheels. It may be
possible to expand the range of requirements, or that a requirement is
too broad. Please report any issues you have building against external
dependencies.
[1] https://github.com/HOST-Oman/libraqm/
[2] https://harfbuzz.github.io/
[3] https://github.com/Tehreer/SheenBidi
[4] https://freetype.org/
[5] https://matplotlib.org/3.11.0/release/next_whats_new
[6] https://matplotlib.org/3.11.0/api/next_api_changes.html
[7] https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/milestone/96?closed=1
--
Elliott
