Printing and Exporting Figures with MATLAB

Font Support for the Various Drivers

In MATLAB, the fonts supported for printing your figure depend upon the MATLAB printer driver you specify and sometimes upon which platform you are using.

PostScript and Ghostscript Supported Fonts

Table 1-1 lists the fonts supported by MATLAB's PostScript and Ghostscript drivers. This same set of fonts is supported on both Windows and UNIX. If you use a font that is not on this list, it will be substituted with Courier.

Table 1-1: Fonts Supported by PostScript and Ghostscript Drivers

AvantGarde	Helvetica-Narrow	Times-Roman
Bookman	NewCenturySchlbk	ZapfChancery
Courier	Palatino	ZapfDingbats
Helvetica	Symbol

Using the set Command to Set the Font.   If you set the font using the set command, use the identical names shown above. This example sets the font of the current text object to Helvetica-Narrow using MATLAB commands.

• set(gca,'FontName','Helvetica-Narrow');
  

Property Editor.   If use a Property Editor dialog box (available under Axes Properties or Current Object Properties on the Edit menu) to set the font, the list of available fonts shown are those supported by your system. If you choose one that is not in the table above, your resulting file will use Courier.

UNIX Supported Fonts

You can use xlsfonts at the UNIX prompt to list the set of fonts available on your system. MATLAB tries to find a font that supports the primary ISO Latin-1 character set. ISO Latin-1 fonts have an X font specification that ends in iso8859-1, which is the formal name of the ISO Latin-1 character set. Here is an example of such a font specification:

• -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
  

Windows Drivers Supported Fonts

The MATLAB Windows drivers support any system-supported font. To see the list of fonts installed on your system, open the Font name list on the Text tab of the Property Editor.

If you use the set command to set fonts, type in the name just as it appears in the Property Editor. For example, if you have the Script font installed on your system, set the title of your figure to Script using the following code.

• h = get(gca,'Title');
  set(h,'FontName','Script');
  

HPGL Driver Supported Fonts

HPGL drivers support only one font. However, you can set its size and color.

Choosing the Right Driver

Drivers Provided by MATLAB