How can I make an Horizontal tab (\t) using TEXT and TeX ?

I manage to display 2 lines in bold as follows:

str =sprintf('{\\bfline1:} \n {\\bfline2:}')
text(0.2,0.3, str)

But if I replace \n (new line) by \t (horizontal tab) :

str =sprintf('{\\bfline1:} \t  {\\bfline2:}')
text(0.2,0.3, str)

I get an empty square box. How can I tell MATLAB to interpret \t as an escape character? I am looking for a solution using \t if possible ant not a workaroung using char(a number) or making myself the corresponding spaces ;)

[Sean de Wolski]

I get a horizontal tab... Windows7 - 12a

Answer 1

[per isakson]

I cannot reproduce your problem. Your code works as expected here, R2012a,64bit,Win7.

[Aurelien Queffurust]

All of us in my office can reproduce the issue in R2011b, R2012a and the new R2012b under Windows XP.

str =sprintf('{\\bfline1:} \t  {\\bfline2:}')
text(0.2,0.3, str)

only works for us under LInux 11b

Thanks for your attempts

Answer 2

[Aurelien Queffurust]

I submitted a Service request to The MathWorks Technical Support. This is their answer :

I understand that '\t' is not recognized as a horizontal tab in your code. I was able to reproduce this issue at my end on a windows XP machine.It works as expected on Windows 7. It seems like a bug and I will forward your use case to our Development Team and they will consider to address it in the future release of MATLAB. As a work around as you had suggested on MATLAB answers you can use char(a particular number) or empty spaces. I apologize for the inconvenience.