How do I get my text to center vertically in a uicontrol textbox?

I am creating a GUI programmatically and I have a panel that I am displaying text boxes. How do I get my text boxes to display the text in the center of the vertical dimension? There is a horizontalAlignment property that centers horizontally, but the vertical dual does not seem to exist.

   hf = figure('Units','normalized',...
              'Position',[0.2 0.2 0.6 0.7]);
   hPanel = uipanel(hf, 'Position',[0.01 0.02 0.98 0.93]);
  posPanel = [0.26 0.28 0.51 0.72];

subPanel = uipanel(hPanel,'Position',posPanel,'FontSize',11);
posTs = [0.2 0.005 0.12 0.08];
SampleTime = uicontrol(subPanel,'Style','text',...
   'String','100.0s',...
   'FontSize',11,...
   'HorizontalAlignment','Center',...
   'Units','normalized',...
   'Position',posTs,...
   'Background',[.8 .8 .8]);

[Jan]

The code is hard to read. Better break the lines to a width, which can be read without scrolling. It would be better to post running code. The current version fails because "Panelhandle" is not defined.

[John Petersen]

Included running code.

[Jiri Hajek]

A workaround that was sufficient for my needs is that the "Edit Field" component has the text vertically aligned to the center, while "Text Area" has the text vertically aligned to the top...

Answer 1

[Jan]

You are right: There is no vertical alignment for uicontrol 's. You can create an (invisible) axes instead and use text(), which has the VerticalAlignment property.

[Rik]

Since this is the top result on Google, I though I would add a native Matlab implementation. The optimal method would be to create a class that will redirect set and get as well, but I will leave that as an excercise for the reader.

function h=uicontrol_centered_text(varargin)
%Mimic a uicontrol call by creating an axes with centered text object.
%
% The input allows all syntax options that uicontrol allows.
% The output is struct('ax',ax_handle,'txt',txt_handle).
%
% All parameters need to be supplied as Name,Value pairs. Below are the
% parameters that are either ignored or redirected to the axes object. The rest
% of the parameters are forwarded to the text object.
%
% ignored:
%   Style
%   VerticalAlignment
%   HorizontalAlignment
% redirected to axes:
%   Position
%   Units
%   Parent

%Deal with the uicontrol(parent,___) syntax.
if mod(nargin,2)==1
    varargin=[{'Parent'},varargin];
end

%Ignore some parameters.
Name=lower({varargin{1:2:end}});
L=ismember(Name,{'style','verticalalignment','horizontalalignment'});
if any(L)
    L=find(L);L=sort([(L*2)-1 L*2]);varargin(L)=[];
end

%Redirect some parameters to the axes object.
Name=lower({varargin{1:2:end}});
L=ismember(Name,{'position','units','parent'});
if any(L)
    L=find(L);L=sort([(L*2)-1 L*2]);ax_args=varargin(L);varargin(L)=[];
else
    ax_args={};
end

%Create an axes, initialize the text object, and make the axes invisible.
ax=axes(ax_args{:});axis(ax,[0 1 0 1])
txt=text(0.5,0.5,'','VerticalAlignment','middle','HorizontalAlignment','center');
set(ax,'Visible','off')

%Apply the remaining Name,Value pairs.
set(txt,varargin{:});

%Create the ouput struct.
h=struct('ax',ax,'txt',txt);
end

[Jorrit M]

Rik's solution above works great, but missed the option to align the text left/right, top/bottom, etc. I edited his code below so the function now uses the 'verticalalignment' and 'horizontalalignment' options instead of simply ignoring them and centering everything.

function h=uitext(varargin)
	%Mimic a uicontrol call by creating an axes with centered text object.
	%
	% The input allows all syntax options that uicontrol allows.
	% The output is struct('ax',ax_handle,'txt',txt_handle).
	%
	% All parameters need to be supplied as Name,Value pairs. Below are the
	% parameters that are either ignored or redirected to the axes object. The rest
	% of the parameters are forwarded to the text object.
	%
	% ignored:
	%   Style
	%   VerticalAlignment
	%   HorizontalAlignment
	% redirected to axes:
	%   Position
	%   Units
	%   Parent
	%Deal with the uicontrol(parent,___) syntax.
	
	if mod(nargin,2)==1
		varargin=[{'Parent'},varargin];
	end
	Name=lower({varargin{1:2:end}});
	
	%retrieve alignment parameters
	strVertAlign = 'middle';
	strHorzAlign = 'center';
	vert = ismember(Name,'verticalalignment');
	if any(vert)
		strVertAlign = varargin{find(vert)*2};
	end
	horz = ismember(Name,'horizontalalignment');
	if any(horz)
		strHorzAlign = varargin{find(horz)*2};
	end
	
	%Ignore some parameters.
	L=ismember(Name,{'style','verticalalignment','horizontalalignment'});
	if any(L)
		L=find(L);
		L=sort([(L*2)-1 L*2]);
		varargin(L)=[];
	end
	%Redirect some parameters to the axes object.
	Name=lower({varargin{1:2:end}});
	L=ismember(Name,{'position','units','parent'});
	if any(L)
		L=find(L);L=sort([(L*2)-1 L*2]);ax_args=varargin(L);varargin(L)=[];
	else
		ax_args={};
	end
	%Create an axes, initialize the text object, and make the axes invisible.
	ax=axes(ax_args{:});axis(ax,[0 1 0 1])
	txt=text(0.5,0.5,'','VerticalAlignment',strVertAlign,'HorizontalAlignment',strHorzAlign);
	set(ax,'Visible','off')
	%Apply the remaining Name,Value pairs.
	set(txt,varargin{:});
	%Create the ouput struct.
	h=struct('ax',ax,'txt',txt);
end

[Rik]

Thank you for the suggested edits. However, you should also edit the comments and the help text, as that doesn't match the code in your version. (you also moved the first comment to the help text)