MATLAB: When using MATLAB 7.0(R14) on the Unix platform, why do accented characters and other symbols appear as empty boxes in figure windows

charactersfontfontsforeignlanglanguagesMATLABspecialsymbols

On UNIX platforms, accented characters and other symbols sometimes display in figure windows as an empty box or other incorrect symbol. These characters and symbols display correctly in the Command Window.

Best Answer

This enhancement has been incorporated in Release 2007b (R2007b). For previous product releases, read below for any possible workarounds:
This problem is due to the UNIX environment variable LANG being unset or set to a variable, such as C, whose character set does not include special characters. To work around the problem, set the LANG environment variable in the shell from which you start MATLAB by running
setenv LANG en_US.ISO8859-1Or set it to another similar value appropriate for your operating system.