# Plots & LaTeX?

It seems like Plots (pyplot backend) doesn’t make a distinction between LaTeX symbols \epsilon (\epsilon) and \varepsilon (\varepsilon). However, it does make a distinction between \sigma (\sigma) and \varsigma (\varsigma), and it does make a distinction between \pi (\pi) and \varpi (\varpi). [Are there other variations in LaTeX?]

Is there a reason for this, or is it on the list of things to update?

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pyplot wraps the matplotlib library (python). Presumably the answer to your question lies there. Have you tried other backends? Also, PGFPlots or PGFPlotsX combine well with latex, I hear.

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Hm… normally, I prefer pyplot because it tends to have better support for \LaTeX… now, the result is a mixed bag… Here is the result when using gr:

Notice that gr correctly renders \epsilon, but it fails to render the LaTeX code in xlabel and ylabel correctly.

When I switch to pyplot, this is what I get:

Another difference is that pyplot renders the plot in Jupyter notebook even if I add command savefig(...) after the plot command – in the same cell, while gr doesn’t render the plot in Jupyter notebook if I add a line with savefig() after the plot command in the cell.

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Have you tried LatexStrings? See this discussion.

I always use LatexStrings.