matlab's phi symbol

Question

Not that significant, but annoying to no end. Why does matlab has no small phi (\varphi) symbol ? It has pretty much all other symbols LaTeX offers, but not this one. Why ?

I may be wrong of course, in which case would be delighted if someone could prove me wrong...

Answer 1

The default interpreter is TeX actually, not LaTeX, which is why you're having this problem. You can use LaTeX as the interpreter for a given part doing something like this:

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

or you can set LaTeX as your default interpretor using

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

which can be put in your startup.m file if you like.

Answer 2

Matlab uses TeX as default. Often, it is possible to switch to LaTeX, but in some cases (dialog boxes), this is impossible.

%# here's an example with all three phis
plot(rand(3))

yh = get(gca,'YLabel');
set(yh,'Interpreter','latex','string','$\varphi$ $\phi$ $\Phi$')