Can't change xlabel font because of diacritics (č, ř, š, ...)

My language uses letters that use diacritics (č, ř, ž, ... ).

I tried to change font in my Matlab script to Latin Modern Roman, and it gave a following error:

Warning: Error updating Text.

String scalar or character vector must have valid interpreter syntax: čas (s)

> In defaulterrorcallback (line 12)

> In print (line 36)

The font was not applied. After I removed the č letter, everything went fine.

Any ideas?

The command I used was:

xlabel('čas (s)','Fontsize',fsz,'FontName','Latin Modern Roman')

Perhaps there is a different way.

Thanks.

[Stephen23]

"any ideas"

The default interpreter is TeX:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/xlabel.html#btpmg0w-1_sep_shared-Interpreter

TeX only accepts ASCII characters. As Dave B wrote, if you want to use other characters, set the interpreter to 'none'.

[Walter Roberson]

@Stephen23

TeX only accepts ASCII characters

That turns out not to be the case

fsz = 20;
subplot(3,1,1)
xlabel('1: čas^2 (s)','Fontsize',fsz,'FontName','Latin Modern Roman', 'interpreter', 'none')
subplot(3,1,2)
xlabel('2: čas^2 (s)','Fontsize',fsz,'FontName','Latin Modern Roman', 'interpreter', 'tex')
subplot(3,1,3)
xlabel('3: čas^2 (s)','Fontsize',fsz,'FontName','Latin Modern Roman', 'interpreter', 'latex')

Warning: Error updating Text.

String scalar or character vector must have valid interpreter syntax:
3: čas^2 (s)

You can see that the warning message is only for the latex version, and you can see that the ^ has resulted in the proper superscript for the tex version, indicating that the text was interpreted as one might hope it would be.

[Stephen23]

"That turns out not to be the case"

As the author of TeX explains, the input text were originally specified as 7-bit, but TeX was modified in 1989 to accept 8-bit text (AFAIK a superset of ASCII): https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb10-3/tb25knut.pdf

See also: https://members.loria.fr/ggamard/pdfs/tex.pdf

This has not been changed since.

+'č' % not in ASCII, not in TeX

ans = 269

TMW may have implemented some flawed, undocumented TeX-like chimera, but it is certainly not TeX.

[Walter Roberson]

@Stephen23

Have you ever managed to get a /def to work in MATLAB? https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/655/what-is-the-difference-between-def-and-newcommand

[Stephen23]

@Walter Roberson: I have never tried. What happens?

[Walter Roberson]

I just get interpreter error messages. As far as I can tell, there are a number of TeX constructs that do not work in MATLAB.

For example, several \begin constructs that I find in TeX-specific documentation do not work; the only one I can get to work is \begin{array} https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/280414-latex-in-live-scripts-using-matrix

but I haven't seen a way to build macros in 'tex' or 'latex' interpreters. And 'latex' \usepackage is certainly not usable...

tex and latex in MATLAB have always been badly restricted.

Answer 1

[Dave B]

The error you're seeing is because of the tex interpreter, although I don't reproduce it with the same characters. If you're not relying on the tex interpreter, you could try turning it off.

Note that in the example below I chose a font that I knew would be recognized in the browser, to check if the font is defined in your desktop version of MATLAB use the listfonts function.

xlabel('čas (s)','Fontsize',14,'FontName','Serif','Interpreter','none')
ylabel('čas (s)','Fontsize',14,'Interpreter','none')

[Vilém Frynta]

Works well, thank you.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

I wonder whether you have configured

set(0, 'DefaultTextInterpreter', 'latex')

latex Interpreter can only handle US-ASCII

[Vilém Frynta]

yes, i think so. i wasn't fully aware of what it was doing. ÷)