[BUG] can't display dollar currency symbol as y-axis label

[mdkeehan]

Details

When I run the following code:

using Plots
plot(rand(3,5),ylabel="profits \$")
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error

while the euro unicode symbol will work beautifully

plot(rand(3,5),ylabel="profits €")

Backends

This bug occurs on ( insert x below )

Backend	yes	no	untested
gr (default)	x
pyplot			x
plotlyjs		x
pgfplotsx			x
unicodeplots			x
inspectdr			x
gaston			x

Versions

Plots.jl version:
Plots v1.25.1

Output of versioninfo():
Julia Version 1.6.3
Commit ae8452a9e0 (2021-09-23 17:34 UTC)
Platform Info:
OS: Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
WORD_SIZE: 64
LIBM: libopenlibm
LLVM: libLLVM-11.0.1 (ORCJIT, skylake)

[mdkeehan]

Some more experiments:

julia> plot(rand(3,5),ylabel=raw"profits $")
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error

julia> plot(rand(3,5),ylabel=raw"profits $")
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error

julia> GR.plot(rand(3,5),ylabel=raw"profits $")
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error

julia> GR.plot(rand(3,5),ylabel="profits \$")
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error

julia> GR.plot(rand(3,5),ylabel=raw"profits $")
ERROR: syntax error
ERROR: syntax error

A work around was too embed unusual unicodes characters that look like dollars but I then run into fonts supporting glyph problems.
It looks like Plots "interpolates" 5 times while calling GR directly interpolates only twice.

[mdkeehan]

plottlyjs() works correctly.

julia> plotlyjs()
Plots.PlotlyJSBackend()

julia> plot(rand(3,5),ylab="profits \$")

julia> gr()
Plots.GRBackend()

[BeastyBlacksmith]

@jheinen: Anything we can do about it?

[jheinen]

Right now (with the GR development branch), the only workaround is to use plot(rand(3,5),ylab="profits \$\$"). I have to admit, that looks odd. I (have to) think of something better.

[ShuhuaGao]

When some more words follow \$, then no error is reported. However, the dollar symbol is not rendered and disappears.

using Plots
plot(rand(3,5),ylabel="profits \$/kWh", size=(500, 200))

In the above, it seems that "kWh" was treated as in an equation environment.

As @jheinen mentioned, plot(rand(3,5),ylabel="profits \$\$/kWh", size=(500, 200)) works well.

[jheinen]

This problem is fixed in the GR development tree. We will tag a new GR release ASAP.

[t-bltg]

Fixed by sciapp/gr@f37dfaa.

[matthewelmer]

So how do I put dollar signs in axis labels now that this is "fixed"? As of now, xlabel=raw"$t$ (seconds)" produces some LaTeX-ified t followed by " (seconds)". I want a literal "$t$ (seconds)" as plaintext so that I can save the figure as svg with fontfamily="" so that I can typeset the axis labels when I include the svg in my LaTeX document.

Doing xlabel=L"\$t\$ (seconds)" makes it puke

latex: failed to create a dvi file
latex: failed to create a dvi file
latex: failed to create a dvi file
latex: failed to create a dvi file
latex: failed to create a dvi file

into stdout and puts a weird backslash where the first dollar sign should be

Update: I came up with a hack to get what I want. Everywhere you want a literal dollar sign, put two. Then,

tmppath, tmpio = mktemp()
open("filename.svg") do file
    for line in eachline(file, keep=true)
        write(tmpio, replace(line, raw"$$" => raw"$"))
    end
end
close(tmpio)
mv(tmppath, "filename.svg", force=true)