changing the font size with {\small} and \begin{small} \end{small}

[mantzaris]

Been having difficulty changing the font size of parts of the string and attempting to put it into the title of a plot with using Plots and either a pyplot or gr backend. The string is produced and do not know if the error is isolated in the figure plotting. A LaTeXString() or latexstring() or L""" """" produce the same error

julia> ll=LaTeXString("an equation;$ 2+3 \beta^3 }$ \n $\begin{small} \tau_4\end{small}$")
L"an equation;$ 2+3 \beta^3 }$
$\begin{small} \tau_4\end{small}$"

julia> plot([1,2,3,4],[1,2,3,4],title=ll)
Error showing value of type Plots.Plot{Plots.PyPlotBackend}:
ERROR: PyError (ccall(@pysym(:PyObject_Call), PyPtr, (PyPtr, PyPtr, PyPtr), o, arg, C_NULL)) <type 'exceptions.ValueError'>

[stevengj]

I assume you mean ll=L"an equation;$ 2+3 \beta^3$ \n $\begin{small} \tau_4\end{small}$". (If you pass a string directly to the LaTeXString constructor you need to escape the dollar signs etcetera.)

It looks like the error originates with Matplotlib. The full error message for me starts with

PyError (ccall(@pysym(:PyObject_Call), PyPtr, (PyPtr, PyPtr, PyPtr), o, arg, kw)) <type 'exceptions.ValueError'>
ValueError(u'\n\\begin{small} \\tau_4\\end{small}\n^\nUnknown symbol: \\begin (at char 0), (line:1, col:1)',)

Notice the Unknown symbol: \begin message: Matplotlib's LaTeX renderer only supports a subset of TeX syntax, and it appears that it does not support \begin{small}.

See also the Matplotlib manual (https://matplotlib.org/users/mathtext.html). In particular, it is possible to switch Matplotlib to use latex itself to do the rendering: https://matplotlib.org/users/usetex.html#usetex-tutorial

[stevengj]

Closing since the problem here is not in LaTeXStrings