aitikgupta · Jun 30, 2021 · Jun 30, 2021 · Jul 18, 2021 · Jul 18, 2021 · Jul 19, 2021
diff --git a/doc/users/fonts.rst b/doc/users/fonts.rst
@@ -128,3 +128,58 @@ This is especially helpful to generate *really lightweight* documents.::
   free versions of the proprietary fonts.
 
   This also violates the *what-you-see-is-what-you-get* feature of Matplotlib.
+
+Are we reinventing the wheel?
+-----------------------------
+Internally, a feasible response to the question of 'reinventing the
+wheel would be, well, Yes *and No*. The font-matching algorithm used
+by Matplotlib has been *inspired* by web browsers, more specifically,
+`CSS Specifications <http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-19980512/>`_!
+
+Currently, the simplest way (and the only way) to tell Matplotlib what fonts
+you want it to use for your document is via the **font.family** rcParam,
+see :doc:`Customizing text properties </tutorials/text/text_props>`.
+
+This is similar to how one tells a browser to use multiple font families
+(specified in their order of preference) for their HTML webpages. By using
+**font-family** in their stylesheet, users can essentially trigger a very
+useful feature provided by browers, known as Font-Fallback. For example, the
+following snippet in an HTMl markup would:
+
+.. code-block:: html
+
+  <style>
+    someTag {
+      font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
+    }
+  </style>
+
+  <!-- somewhere in the main body -->
+  <someTag>
+    some text
+  </someTag>
+
+
+For every character/glyph in *"some text"*, the browser will iterate through
+the whole list of font-families, and check whether that character/glyph is
+available in that font-family. As soon as a font is found which has the
+required glyph(s), the browser moves on to the next character.
+
+How does Matplotlib achieve this?
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+Well, Matplotlib doesn't achieve this, *yet*. It was initially only designed to
+use a **single font** throughout the document, i.e., no matter how many
+families you pass to **font.family** rcParam, Matplotlib would use the very
+first font it's able to find on your system, and try to render all your
+characters/glyphs from that *and only that* font.
+
+.. note::
+  This is, because the internal font matching was written/adapted
+  from a very old `CSS1 spec <http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-19980512/>`_,
+  **written in 1998**!
+
+  However, allowing multiple fonts for a single document (also enabling
+  Font-Fallback) is one of the goals for 2021's Google Summer of Code project.
+
+  `Read more on Matplotblog <https://matplotlib.org/matplotblog/>`_!
+
diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/backends/backend_agg.py b/lib/matplotlib/backends/backend_agg.py
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@
 from matplotlib.backend_bases import (
     _Backend, _check_savefig_extra_args, FigureCanvasBase, FigureManagerBase,
     RendererBase)
-from matplotlib.font_manager import findfont, get_font
+from matplotlib.font_manager import get_font, find_fontsprop
 from matplotlib.ft2font import (LOAD_FORCE_AUTOHINT, LOAD_NO_HINTING,
                                 LOAD_DEFAULT, LOAD_NO_AUTOHINT)
 from matplotlib.mathtext import MathTextParser
@@ -251,8 +251,8 @@ def _get_agg_font(self, prop):
         """
         Get the font for text instance t, caching for efficiency
         """
-        fname = findfont(prop)
-        font = get_font(fname)
+        finterface = find_fontsprop(prop)
+        font = get_font(finterface)
 
         font.clear()
         size = prop.get_size_in_points()

diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/font_manager.py b/lib/matplotlib/font_manager.py
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@
 #   - setWeights function needs improvement
 #   - 'light' is an invalid weight value, remove it.
 
+from collections import OrderedDict
 import dataclasses
 from functools import lru_cache
 import json
@@ -1308,6 +1309,100 @@ def findfont(self, prop, fontext='ttf', directory=None,
             prop, fontext, directory, fallback_to_default, rebuild_if_missing,
             rc_params)
 
+    def find_fontsprop(self, prop, fontext='ttf', directory=None,
+                       fallback_to_default=True, rebuild_if_missing=True):
+        """
+        Find font families that most closely matches the given properties.
+
+        Parameters
+        ----------
+        prop : str or `~matplotlib.font_manager.FontProperties`
+            The font properties to search for. This can be either a
+            `.FontProperties` object or a string defining a
+            `fontconfig patterns`_.
+
+        fontext : {'ttf', 'afm'}, default: 'ttf'
+            The extension of the font file:
+
+            - 'ttf': TrueType and OpenType fonts (.ttf, .ttc, .otf)
+            - 'afm': Adobe Font Metrics (.afm)
+
+        directory : str, optional
+            If given, only search this directory and its subdirectories.
+
+        fallback_to_default : bool
+            If True, will fallback to the default font family (usually
+            "DejaVu Sans" or "Helvetica") if none of the families were found.
+
+        rebuild_if_missing : bool
+            Whether to rebuild the font cache and search again if the first
+            match appears to point to a nonexisting font (i.e., the font cache
+            contains outdated entries).
+
+        Returns
+        -------
+        OrderedDict
+            key, value pair of families and their corresponding filepaths.
+
+        Notes
+        -----
+        This is a plugin to original findfont API, which only returns a
+        single font for given font properties. Instead, this API returns
+        an OrderedDict containing multiple fonts and their filepaths which
+        closely match the given font properties.
+        Since this internally uses original API, there's no change
+        to the logic of performing the nearest neighbor search.
+        See `findfont` for more details.
+
+        """
+
+        rc_params = tuple(tuple(rcParams[key]) for key in [
+            "font.serif", "font.sans-serif", "font.cursive", "font.fantasy",
+            "font.monospace"])
+
+        prop = FontProperties._from_any(prop)
+        ffamily = prop.get_family()
+
+        fpaths = OrderedDict()
+        for fidx in range(len(ffamily)):
+            cprop = prop.copy()
+
+            # set current prop's family
+            cprop.set_family(ffamily[fidx])
+
+            try:
+                fpath = self._findfont_cached(
+                    cprop, fontext, directory,
+                    False, rebuild_if_missing, rc_params
+                )
+                fpaths[ffamily[fidx]] = fpath
+            except ValueError:
+                _log.warning(
+                    'findfont: Font family [\'%s\'] not found.', ffamily[fidx]
+                )
+                if ffamily[fidx].lower() in font_family_aliases:
+                    _log.warning(
+                        "findfont: Generic family [%r] not found because "
+                        "none of the following families were found: %s",
+                        ffamily[fidx],
+                        ", ".join(self._expand_aliases(ffamily[fidx]))
+                    )
+
+        if not fpaths:
+            if fallback_to_default:
+                dfamily = self.defaultFamily[fontext]
+                cprop = prop.copy().set_family(dfamily)
+                fpath = self._findfont_cached(
+                    cprop, fontext, directory,
+                    True, rebuild_if_missing, rc_params
+                )
+                fpaths[dfamily] = fpath
+            else:
+                raise ValueError("Failed to find any font, and fallback "
+                                 "to the default font was disabled.")
+
+        return fpaths
+
     @lru_cache()
     def _findfont_cached(self, prop, fontext, directory, fallback_to_default,
                          rebuild_if_missing, rc_params):
@@ -1401,9 +1496,11 @@ def is_opentype_cff_font(filename):
 
 
 @lru_cache(64)
-def _get_font(filename, hinting_factor, *, _kerning_factor, thread_id):
+def _get_font(fpaths, hinting_factor, *, _kerning_factor, thread_id):
+    # multiple paths, take first one
+    # for now, which is always guaranteed
     return ft2font.FT2Font(
-        filename, hinting_factor, _kerning_factor=_kerning_factor)
+        fpaths[0], hinting_factor, _kerning_factor=_kerning_factor)
 
 
 # FT2Font objects cannot be used across fork()s because they reference the same
@@ -1417,11 +1514,14 @@ def _get_font(filename, hinting_factor, *, _kerning_factor, thread_id):
 def get_font(filename, hinting_factor=None):
     # Resolving the path avoids embedding the font twice in pdf/ps output if a
     # single font is selected using two different relative paths.
-    filename = _cached_realpath(filename)
+    if isinstance(filename, OrderedDict):
+        paths = tuple(_cached_realpath(fname) for fname in filename.values())
+    else:
+        paths = (_cached_realpath(filename),)
     if hinting_factor is None:
         hinting_factor = rcParams['text.hinting_factor']
     # also key on the thread ID to prevent segfaults with multi-threading
-    return _get_font(filename, hinting_factor,
+    return _get_font(paths, hinting_factor,
                      _kerning_factor=rcParams['text.kerning_factor'],
                      thread_id=threading.get_ident())
 
@@ -1446,3 +1546,4 @@ def _load_fontmanager(*, try_read_cache=True):
 
 fontManager = _load_fontmanager()
 findfont = fontManager.findfont
+find_fontsprop = fontManager.find_fontsprop