Matlab phi symbol

Question

Not so important, but annoying to the end. Why doesn't Matlab have a small phi character ( \varphi )? It has almost all the other characters that LaTeX offers, but not this one. Why?

Perhaps I am mistaken, and in this case it would be delighted if someone could prove to me that I am mistaken ...

Answer 1

By default, the interpreter is TeX, not LaTeX, so you have this problem. You can use LaTeX as an interpreter for this part by doing something like this:

 plot(1); hl = legend('$$\varphi$$'); set(hl,'Interpreter','latex') 

or you can set LaTeX as the default interpreter using

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

which can be placed in the startup.m file if you want.

Answer 2

Matlab uses TeX by default. You can often switch to LaTeX, but in some cases (dialog boxes) this is not possible.

 %# here an example with all three phis plot(rand(3)) yh = get(gca,'YLabel'); set(yh,'Interpreter','latex','string','$\varphi$ $\phi$ $\Phi$')