Created attachment 679770 [details]
Patch that fixes the problem

Description of problem:
Doing the following imports caused the following IndexError:

import os, posix, stat, sys

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.font_manager as fm

 File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 994, in __init__
    self.defaultFont['afm'] = self.afmfiles[0]
IndexError: list index out of range

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
python-matplotlib-1.2.0-7

How reproducible:
100%

Steps to Reproduce:
1. do the above imports. 

  
Actual results:
IndexError: list index out of range


Expected results:
No errors

Additional info:
The commit that seem to cause the problem:

commit eb9a122389b7ec7e33d9816fa669d7cb1f04521a
Author: pcpa <paulo.cesar.pereira.de.andrade>
Date:   Wed Jan 16 13:59:10 2013 -0200

    Use fontconfig by default (#885307)

The patch that fixes the problem (which is attached)

diff -up matplotlib-1.2.0/lib/matplotlib/font_manager.py.orig matplotlib-1.2.0/lib/matplotlib/font_manager.py
--- matplotlib-1.2.0/lib/matplotlib/font_manager.py.orig	2013-01-16 14:25:29.500964424 -0500
+++ matplotlib-1.2.0/lib/matplotlib/font_manager.py	2013-01-16 14:25:36.114964740 -0500
@@ -991,7 +991,10 @@ class FontManager:
         self.afmfiles = findSystemFonts(paths, fontext='afm') + \
             findSystemFonts(fontext='afm')
         self.afmlist = createFontList(self.afmfiles, fontext='afm')
-        self.defaultFont['afm'] = self.afmfiles[0]
+        try:
+            self.defaultFont['afm'] = self.afmfiles[0]
+        except IndexError:
+            self.defaultFont['afm'] = None
 
         self.ttf_lookup_cache = {}
         self.afm_lookup_cache = {}