how to plot a figure with a title in Arabic?

Hi there,

How can I plot a figure with a title in arabic (in xlable, ylable and legend)

Thanks.

Answer 1

[Chunru]

Matlab support unicodes:

plot(rand(6,1));
title("بﺖ");    % random arabic charactors
xlabel("بﺖ");
ylabel("بﺖ");

[Walter Roberson]

A key point here is that using Unicode characters, like Chunru shows, only works for Interpreter 'none' or Interpreter 'TeX'. It is not possible to do with 'Interpreter', 'latex'

[mindo akami]

I use 2009a

[Awais Saeed]

try https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/116582-how-to-plot-a-figure-with-a-title-in-farsi-or-arabic#answer_304450

[Chunru]

It's too bad. The version you use is way too old.

[Walter Roberson]

Unicode is not supported until R2015b.

In R2009a, you would have to find a Font that was able to represent your characters using only values no greater than 255. If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_script_in_Unicode then the most you would be able to do would be to restrict yourself to forms simular to what is available using the characters they note as starting with prefix 06.

For example you might use Windows Code Page 720 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_720 or Windows 1256 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1256

Use listfonts() to see which fonts are available on your system.

You would have to be careful: in your version there is no way to store arabic characters in the file. So you would end up with something like

codes = char(sscanf('c3 e5 e1 c7', '%x', [1 inf]));
xlabel(codes, 'fontname', 'windows1256')

If all goes well, it should show up as أهلا

[Chunru]

Good try and effort. It does not work on my machine. Might be a different code page?

plot(rand(6,1))
codes = char(sscanf('c3 e5 e1 c7', '%x', [1 inf]));
xlabel(codes, 'fontname', 'windows1256')

[Walter Roberson]

@Chunru

Your plot show above was run in MATLAB Online, which is a Linux system that does not have any Windows fonts installed.

According to https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/97260-how-can-i-add-a-new-font-to-the-list-of-available-fonts-in-matlab-q on Windows you should be able to install a TrueType font such as the Traditional Arabic at https://www.wfonts.com/font/traditional-arabic

I am not currently able to test that myself; Windows does not permit you to install fonts unless you have Activated (Windows considers every virtual machine as requiring a complete Windows license of its own. I Activated my Windows boot partition, just not the Virtual Machine that I test MATLAB with.)

[Chunru]

@Walter Roberson I did try on my windows machine before the on-line one. It did not work out for me.

[Walter Roberson]

@Chunru

Does listfonts() list any Arabic fonts on your system?

[Chunru]

listfonts() does not give the Arabic fonts. I also chech Fonts under Windows. It looks like the Arabic font is not installed in my machine. That may explain why it does not work on my machine.

[Walter Roberson]

It would probably end up having to be something like

xlabel(codes, 'fontname', 'Arabic Traditional')