# latex labels on plots

Hi all

which mentions using LaTeX to generate labels on plots in Matplotlib.

What I only discovered recently is that you don't need this 'usetext=1'
thing in order to create captions on plots that include subscripts, etc.
According to section 2.6.4 of the user's guide, you can just surround
your text with $...$ to have it formatted as if it were latex. This is
especially important if you're exporting SVG graphics (eg if you want to
add more captioning/labelling using inkscape): the 'usetex' approach
fails in that case.

I wonder if someone with write access to the scipy wiki could maybe
update the above page with some comments about the 'mathtext' support in
Matplotlib? It might also be worth noting that the mathtext
functionality doesn't support the \frac operator.

Cheers
JP

···

--
John Pye
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052 Australia
t +61 2 9385 5127
f +61 2 9663 1222
mailto:john.pye_AT_student_DOT_unsw.edu.au
http://pye.dyndns.org/

Hi,

frac works for me:

yaxislabel=r'\sffamily water content $\left( \frac{\textsf{kg}}{\textsf{m}^{\textsf{\small 2}}}\right)$'

ylabel(yaxislabel)

And you can also set
rc('text', usetex=False)
in your file to enable or disable tex

in my case I did the following:

tex_out=True # False
if tex_out:
xaxislabel=r'time ($\sqrt{\textsf{s}}$)'
yaxislabel=r'\sffamily water content $\left( \frac{\textsf{kg}}{\textsf{m}^{\textsf{\small 2}}}\right)$'
rc('text', usetex=True)
else:
xaxislabel='time (s**0.5)'
yaxislabel='water content (kg/m2)'
rc('text', usetex=False)

It's perhaps not the mose elegant way to do, but I'm quite new to python/pylab/matplotlib

Wolfgang

John Pye schrieb:

···

Hi all

which mentions using LaTeX to generate labels on plots in Matplotlib.

What I only discovered recently is that you don't need this 'usetext=1'
thing in order to create captions on plots that include subscripts, etc.
According to section 2.6.4 of the user's guide, you can just surround
your text with $...$ to have it formatted as if it were latex. This is
especially important if you're exporting SVG graphics (eg if you want to
add more captioning/labelling using inkscape): the 'usetex' approach
fails in that case.

I wonder if someone with write access to the scipy wiki could maybe
update the above page with some comments about the 'mathtext' support in
Matplotlib? It might also be worth noting that the mathtext
functionality doesn't support the \frac operator.

Cheers
JP

What I meant to say was that \frac doesn't work for me with the mathtext
renderer, i.e. with usetex=False. Do you find that it *does*?

Cheers
JP

Wolfgang wrote:

···

Hi,

frac works for me:

yaxislabel=r'\sffamily water content $\left( \frac{\textsf{kg}}{\textsf{m}^{\textsf{\small 2}}}\right)$'

ylabel(yaxislabel)

And you can also set
rc('text', usetex=False)
in your file to enable or disable tex

in my case I did the following:

tex_out=True # False
if tex_out:
xaxislabel=r'time ($\sqrt{\textsf{s}}$)'
yaxislabel=r'\sffamily water content $\left( \frac{\textsf{kg}}{\textsf{m}^{\textsf{\small 2}}}\right)$'
rc('text', usetex=True)
else:
xaxislabel='time (s**0.5)'
yaxislabel='water content (kg/m2)'
rc('text', usetex=False)

It's perhaps not the mose elegant way to do, but I'm quite new to
python/pylab/matplotlib

Wolfgang

John Pye schrieb:

Hi all

which mentions using LaTeX to generate labels on plots in Matplotlib.

What I only discovered recently is that you don't need this 'usetext=1'
thing in order to create captions on plots that include subscripts, etc.
According to section 2.6.4 of the user's guide, you can just surround
your text with $...$ to have it formatted as if it were latex. This is
especially important if you're exporting SVG graphics (eg if you want to
add more captioning/labelling using inkscape): the 'usetex' approach
fails in that case.

I wonder if someone with write access to the scipy wiki could maybe
update the above page with some comments about the 'mathtext' support in
Matplotlib? It might also be worth noting that the mathtext
functionality doesn't support the \frac operator.

Cheers
JP

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