LaTeX interpreter but sans-serif font on figures

Hi,

On LaTeX I often use the

\usepackage{cmbright}

font when I want to have a clean, sans-serif font both in the text and in the mathematical formula I write.

In order to have an homogeneous result between my figures and the text, I would like the text in my figures (labels, axis ticks, title, annotations...) to be as well in this font.

Unfortunately so far on Matlab, when using the LaTeX interpreter, only the default font is available. I would like to be able to write both text and mathematical formulas in a sans-serif font (and the same for both text and math) on the figures I plot.

Is it possible?

I am on Mac OS 10.14.1 (Matlab 2018a) and also on Ubuntu 18.10 (Matlab 2018b).

Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

[Prakhar Jain]

Hi LeChat,

In order to change font for any text object you just need to set the 'Interpreter' property to 'latex'. As shown below:

xlabel('$$\int_0^x\!\int_y dF(u,v)$$','Interpreter','latex');

If you want to have tick labels also follow link below:

How can I make the Xtick and Ytick labels of my axes utilize the LaTeX fonts in MATLAB?

Also, there are files available for the same. This is one of them.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

[LeChat]

Hi, thank you for your answer.

Actually it seems that just changing the interpreter is not enough to change the actual font of the expression: I indeed get latex compiling properly (I mean, I can have μ and stuff properly using the $ sign). But the font is the LaTeX classic Times-like font whereas what I want is a sans-serif font, like \usepackage{cmbright} enables in LaTeX.

[LeChat]

Why is LaTeX so ill-implemented in Matlab plots and figures?

Pretty sure it would be a game-changer for most users. Many of us actually post-treat the graphs on Inkscape (or else) in order to have a nicer rendering, with more cosmetic homogeneity with the rest of the text of the document we are writting...

[Marshall Styczinski]

This is Matlab in a nutshell. It does everything, but it does nothing well.

I have the same problem, and I have been researching a solution to this problem for several hours. Add one to the list of reasons I will continue to push my collaborators to move to other languages/platforms. It ends up being easier to mate multiple other languages than to try to get Matlab to do the one thing I need well enough.

[LeChat]

Hey Marshall, so since your last message, what have you been using (languagewise) instead of Matlab? They recently changed the my to remove outlayer data in the cftool fitting tool (R2022a) so I am thinking of switching to something else too if this does not get corrected in the coming Matlab versions.

In any case I usually "polish" the cosmetic of my graphs in Inkscape so this my workaround regarding LaTeX font issue... as you say, not the best, but so far it does it :) Cheers!