How can I write Greek letters in a Static Text box in GUIDE in MATLAB 7.1 (R14SP3)?

I would like to write Greek letters (or other LaTex symbols) like "alpha" in a Static Text Box in GUIDE.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

UICONTROLs do not support TeX or LaTeX symbols.

To work around this limitation, one can use a TEXT object which does support LaTeX. Note that the TEXT object is not accessible in GUIDE though. Therefore you can use the following piece of code in your figure's OpeningFcn to automatically replace certain Static Text UICONTROLs with TEXT objects:

% TEXT annotations need an axes as parent so create an invisible axes which

% is as big as the figure

handles.laxis = axes('parent',hObject,'units','normalized','position',[0 0 1 1],'visible','off');

% Find all static text UICONTROLS whose 'Tag' starts with latex_

lbls = findobj(hObject,'-regexp','tag','latex_*');

for i=1:length(lbls)

      l = lbls(i);

      % Get current text, position and tag

      set(l,'units','normalized');

      s = get(l,'string');

      p = get(l,'position');

      t = get(l,'tag');

      % Remove the UICONTROL

      delete(l);

      % Replace it with a TEXT object 

      handles.(t) = text(p(1),p(2),s,'interpreter','latex');

end

Place this piece of code right before the following line in the OpeningFcn:

% Update handles structure

guidata(hObject, handles);

Further in GUIDE give the Static Text boxes which need to be rendered using LaTeX, a 'Tag' which starts with latex_.