How to add Line/Markers to an Axis Label?

It is fairly common to add an example of either the line style or marker style to the Y-axis label of a plot when plotting multiple datasets to make the plot easier to understand. See attached examples. Is this possible to do in matlab?

I do not want to use a legend. Surprisingly I haven't been able to find any solutions on this.

[Jim Riggs]

I believe that it is doable, but it would take a lot of work. You can use various plot annotation functions to create the desired axis label. Figuring out how to scale it and position it in the figure window would take some effort.

[dpb]

It may be "fairly common" in some universe, but have to allow as I don't recall ever having seen such.

As @Jim Riggs notes, there is no facility in MATLAB (nor any other graphics package I know of) to draw a line in a text object used as the axis label; to do something of the sort in MATLAB would entail writing axis label leaving sufficient room for the linestyle and then plot over it at the proper location(s) with a line of given style, length. And, that presumes (which I've not tried) that you can manage to do that without destroying the label.

If that doesn't work, then you'll have to build the label from a series of annotation and line objects.

So, I don't find it at all surprising there are no "solutions" for this...if you think it is of sufficient utility, looks like a prime candidate for a FileExchange submission. You can also always submit an enhancement request for the feature, but I'd think this one wouldn't get a lot of love...

[Steven Lord]

I think the more common approach to distinguish between multiple lines in an axes would be to use a legend. Could you share more information about why a legend does not satisfy your needs or why you would prefer not to use a legend?

[Daniel]

For clarity. You do not need to use an additional legend when you can quickly identify it on the Y-axis. Another useful case is when there are a left and a right Y-axis and it makes it easier to differentiate the two, say dashed vs. solid line.

I don't feel this is terribly unique as I see it done in scientific literature plots occasionally. I know it is possible in other plotting softwares like Origin or Python.

I am just surprised there is no way to put the same lines or symbol examples that would appear in the legend into a label.

[dpb]

Well, there are lots of little holes in handle graphics and annotation objects that weren't thought of in the beginning...annotation can draw line, but it is a different kind of line object than the one for plot; it has 'linestyle', but no 'marker' property. And, even if did, there's no facility to join disparate annotations types into a single coherent piece.

No hatching patterns, ...

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

L = "G\prime ( \bullet ) and G\prime\prime ( \color{red}{\bullet}\color{black} ) (Pa)";
ylabel(L, 'interpreter', 'tex')

See also https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/502442-matlab-colors-required-in-latex#comment_791006 where Adam showed how to specify color by RGB

Note that \color is a mode; the color continues until it is switched off. Also note that I used tex interpreter for this. And \bullet .

To extract the marker shape from a line and map it to tex to draw a similar shape would be more work; I do not know if it is generally possible for all of the markers, given the limitations of MATLAB's TeX and LaTeX

[Daniel]

This is a good answer and probably the closest we will get thank you.

Quickly playing around with latex, $^{\_\_\_\_}$ gives a nearly solid line. $\cdot\cdot\cdot$ gives a dotted line and $---$ gives a dashed line. Some more work could clean these up.

[Walter Roberson]

I wonder whether some of the options described in https://linuxhint.com/latex-horizontal-line/ could be used ?