Saving polar plots with MiKTeX on Windows fails for some file formats

[urogers]

Bug summary

Saving matplotlib polar plots on Windows 7 and Windows 10, with MiKTex 2.9.7.000, fails for some formats (e.g., pdf, svg) and works for others (e.g., png, jpg)

Code for reproduction

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.rcParams['text.usetex'] = True

plt.figure()
ax = plt.subplot(111, polar=True)

plt.savefig('foo.png')  # Works
plt.savefig('foo.jpg')  # Works
plt.savefig('foo.tif')  # Works
# plt.savefig('foo.pdf')  # Fails
# plt.savefig('foo.svg')  # Fails
plt.show()

Actual outcome

"Error saving .... " window pops up with error code b'tcss1000' for pdf, and b'tcss3583' for svg. (The numbers change)

Matplotlib version

• Operating system: Windows 7 & 10
• Matplotlib version: 2.2.2 or 3.0.3
• Matplotlib backend (print(matplotlib.get_backend())): Qt5Agg
• Python version: 3.6
• Jupyter version (if applicable): N/A
• Other libraries: N/A

Installed via Anaconda3

[QuLogic]

Matplotlib version: 2.2.2

This version is fairly old; please try with 3.0.2.

[ImportanceOfBeingErnest]

I can reproduce this with master branch, windows 8.1 and miktex 2.9.6630.

It bisects to https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/11381

[anntzer]

Looks like a duplicate of https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/10272 (try installing the cm-super tex package)? (It may make sense to switch from computer modern to latin modern at some point, which at least has the advantage that we can check for its existence with \usepackage{lmodern}.)

[ImportanceOfBeingErnest]

Installing cm-super solves this for pdf output, but not for svg. In the svg case I get

D:\****\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\textpath.py:349: UserWarning: The glyph (176) of font  
(D:/***/MiKTeX/fonts/type1/public/cm-super/sfss3583.pfb) cannot be converted with the encoding.  
Glyph may be wrong   
 "be wrong" % (glyph, font.fname))

And the output is a svg file without the ° symbols.

I think the main point here, in contrast to #10272 is, that a standard empty plot should not fail for standard latex installations.

[anntzer]

Looks like if you zoom a lot, you'll see a tiny degree sign, which suggests to me that the problem is the same as the one described in https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/12928?

[ImportanceOfBeingErnest]

Yes, with current master, the warning reads

The glyph 176 of font D:/****/MiKTeX/fonts/type1/public/cm-super/sfss3583.pfb cannot be converted with the encoding; glyph may be wrong.

[anntzer]

The warning is actually spurious (per #14156), but the sizing problem is real.