Using tkFont from tkinter to identify if a font (Helvetica-Light) is available/installed
I ended up writing a shell based method to call the fc-list terminal command:
def verify_fonts_are_installed_for_statements(): import subprocess from os import path potential_locations = [ '/usr/bin/fc-list', '/usr/sbin/fc-list', '/usr/local/sbin/fc-list', '/usr/local/bin/fc-list', ] valid_path = None for file_path in potential_locations: if path.exists(file_path): valid_path = file_path break if valid_path is None: raise IOError('could not find fc-list to verify fonts exist.') cmd = [valid_path] output = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0] if 'Helvetica Neue' not in output: raise FontNotInstalledException('Helvetica Neue') if 'Courier' not in output: raise FontNotInstalledException('Courier') log.debug('Courier and Helvetica Neue were found to be installed.')