ggplot error: ssh X11 forwarding

Question

I am using ggplot over ssh and running into the following error:

ggplot(data) outputs the following error

X11 font -adobe-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*, face 1 at size 9 could not be loaded

It appears this could be due to several issues. Is there anyone work around/solution? I'm using R-3.3.0

Answer 1

You can use the extrafont package to manage what font ggplot2 is using and potentially change this to something available on the system that is drawing the plot.

    require(extrafont)
    extrafont::font_import()  ## first time could take a while
    extrafont::loadfonts()
    ggplot_font <- extrafont::choose_font(c(“Helvetica", "Arial”))  ## or enter a system font that is available

Then add to your plot + theme(text = element_text(family = ggplot_font)

You can see what fonts are available after extrafont::loadfonts() using extrafont::fonttable()