Help me read the doc on matlab.fonts Settings

Background

I use the font, Inconsolata, in the Command Window and the Editor. It's very readable (imo), however there is a problem. The character width of the bold font is somewhat larger than that of the plain font. Now, I'm making a tool that outputs text to the command window. I mix bold and plain and requires "columns" to line up. That's not possible with Inconsolata. Thus, I want to temporarily switch to Monospaced.

Approach

In the documentation I found the following example (It looks identical to that of R2018b.)

s = settings;
s.matlab.fonts.codefont.Name.TemporaryValue = 'Times New Roman'

In the Preferens/Fonts GUI I reset the value. And inspected the codefont values.

>> s.matlab.fonts.codefont.Name
ans = 
  Setting 'matlab.fonts.codefont.Name' with properties:
       ActiveValue: 'Inconsolata'
    TemporaryValue: <no value>
     PersonalValue: 'Inconsolata'
      FactoryValue: 'Monospaced'

Questions

• What is the purpose of TemporaryValue ? The name itself indicates that its value will only be used for a limited time. Setting TemporaryValue obviously sets ActiveValue to the same value. ActiveValue is read-only.
• Should I use something like this

        s = settings;
        old_value = s.matlab.fonts.codefont.Name.ActiveValue;
        s.matlab.fonts.codefont.Name.TemporaryValue = 'Monospaced';
        % my print
        s.matlab.fonts.codefont.Name.TemporaryValue = old_value;        

EDIT: This approach won't work, since resetting the font will change all text in the Command Window.

[Mario Malic]

Hello Per,

How do you print your data to command window?

I use the disp(X;Y) combined with Preferences - Command Window - Set matrix display width... (unchecked) that gives me this output, where X and Y are vectors 1x10.

% With format long
Function evaluation : 7
   0.042840000000000   0.042840000000000   0.036280000000000   0.021000000000000                   0
                   0   0.021710000000000   0.034440000000000   0.042000000000000   0.042000000000000

Interesting thing about it is that output varies depending on the width of command window. Function disp also supports HTML code if that would be of interest to you.

[per isakson]

Hello Mario,

I use cprintf - display formatted colored text in the Command Window, by Yair Altman to print to the command window. To apply different colors and plain/bold to different text fragments of a single line, I use several calls to cprintf().

Access and Modify Settings provides some answers.

Maybe, I should postpone the idea of switching fonts, since "Add font support" is on the TODO-list of cprintf() and most Matlab users use Monospaced anyway.

[Yair Altman]

@Per - the reason this is not [yet] implemented in cprintf is because, as you've seen, the updated font applies to the entire Command Window text, not simply to the text from that point onward. I have not discovered a way to modify the font of just part of the Command Window.

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

What is the purpose of TemporaryValue ? The name itself indicates that its value will only be used for a limited time. Setting TemporaryValue obviously sets ActiveValue to the same value. ActiveValue is read-only.

See the explanation of the purpose of each of the four levels here. Basically:

If you're querying for what value the setting has right now get the ActiveValue.

ActiveValue depends on the other three and will be the first of TemporaryValue, PersonalValue, and FactoryValue (in that order) that is set.

TemporaryValue gets cleared when MATLAB exits, PersonalValue and FactoryValue do not.