CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rggplot2fonts
Anthony Martin
Anthony Martin

Reputation: 787

I cannot import fonts using font_import

I am trying to import fonts for ggplot2 graphs as in described here.

When I try do to so piece by piece with this code : 

font_import(pattern = "Arial.ttf")
y

I get this error : 

canning ttf files in C:\windows\Fonts ...
Extracting .afm files from .ttf files...
Error in data.frame(fontfile = ttfiles, FontName = "", stringsAsFactors = FALSE) : 
  arguments imply differing number of rows: 0, 1

I have checked that I have indeed the Arial font : enter image description here

What is my problem

Upvotes: 3

Views: 5686

Answers (2)

Jenny Hansen
Jenny Hansen

Reputation: 71

I was having the same problem, i.e. trying to import a font (Zallman Caps) using font_import() and receiving the same error:

"Error in data.frame(fontfile = ttfiles, FontName = "", stringsAsFactors = FALSE) : 
   arguments imply differing number of rows: 0, 1"

After a lot of trial and error, I finally found a solution that worked for me and perhaps it will for you, as well.

Even though I could see the Zallman Caps font in my Windows Fonts folder and verified that it worked in Word, neither font_import() nor list.files() could find it there. I managed to import the font by entering the following code:

font_import(path = "C:/Users/*insert your user name*/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Fonts", pattern = ".TTF")

I have no idea why it isn't visible to R in the main fonts directory, when I can clearly see it in Windows file explorer, but at least I managed to import the font using this workaround.

Upvotes: 7

GcL
GcL

Reputation: 617

Really check the file name

tl;dr Windows is case-insensitive, but R's grepl is not, and import_font passes the pattern argument grepl

Use:

extrafont::font_import(pattern="arial.ttf", prompt=FALSE)

Why? Because Windows returns "arial.ttf" as the file name.

File Explorer doesn't show font file names

The pattern "Arial.ttf" would match C:\Windows\Fonts\Arial.ttf. However on my test system the file is just C:\Windows\Fonts\Arial without an extension. This is what you see when looking at the directory using File Explorer. File Explorer is not showing you the file names as illustrated below.

Look for font file with R or powershell

The output of the file name via any of these methods is arial.ttf.

Using powershell

ls C:\Windows\Fonts | findstr -i arial
gci -Path "C:\Windows\Fonts" -Recurse -File -Filter "arial.ttf"
gci -Path "C:\Windows\Fonts" -Recurse -File -Filter "Arial.ttf"

all show the filename arial.ttf.

Using R

# font_import lists files using this function
list.files("C:/Windows/Fonts", pattern="\\.ttf") # shows arial.ttf

file.exists("C:/Windows/Fonts/arial.ttf") # TRUE
file.exists("C:/Windows/Fonts/Arial.ttf") # TRUE b/c Windows is case-insensitive

How font_import uses pattern argument

Looking into how font_import uses the pattern supplied:

extrafont::font_import # prints the source
#function (paths = NULL, recursive = TRUE, prompt = TRUE, pattern = NULL) 
#{
#...
#    ttf_import(paths, recursive, pattern)
#}

extrafont:::ttf_import # print the source
#function (paths = NULL, recursive = TRUE, pattern = NULL) 
#{
#    if (is.null(paths)) 
#        paths <- ttf_find_default_path()
#    ttfiles <- normalizePath(list.files(paths, pattern = "\\.ttf$", 
#        full.names = TRUE, recursive = recursive, ignore.case = TRUE))
#    if (!is.null(pattern)) {
#        matchfiles <- grepl(pattern, basename(ttfiles))
#        ttfiles <- ttfiles[matchfiles]
#    }
#...
#}

The line where the supplied pattern gets used is in a call to grepl 

matchfiles <- grepl(pattern, basename(ttfiles))

Upvotes: 2

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