Saving figure to pdf prints # instead of tabs in titles - matlab

Question

if I create a plot with some tabs in the titles and try saving that to a local pdf file (via print function), I get some hashtags instead of tabs in the pdf. This does not occur in the visible figure.
For example, I plotted the residuals of an approximant to the runge function on a grid:
plot(g, f(g) - runge(g));
title(sprintf('residuals,\t max_x(s-f) = %.3f', max(f(g)-runge(g))));
Then after some axes manipulation (grid, boxes, etc..) I execute
h = gcf;
set(h,'Units','Inches');
pos = get(h,'Position');
set(h,'PaperPositionMode','Auto','PaperUnits','Inches','PaperSize',[pos(3), pos(4)])
print(h,'data/runge_example.pdf','-dpdf','-r200')
close(h)
Is somebody aware of that behaviour or better able to found that as already solved than I am?
EDIT: Same behaviour with saveas and saving to eps. This does not happen with \n
EDIT2: I'm using Matlab Version R2017b (9.3.0.7...)

Answer 1

So, after a long discussion we figured out that we have no idea of how to use tabs in matlab titles in combination with latex mode.
To clarify: use math environments and escape tex directives, otherwise it will throw an error.
so
sprintf('residuals,\t $max_x(\\vert s-f\\vert) = %.3f$', max(f(g)-runge(g))));
will give you a nice string:
residuals, $max_x(\vert s-f\vert) = 0.264$
The problem is, that it really is a tab. And the matlab latex interpreter (don't know which one that uses, the system or an own) crashes on that. I copy-pasted that to a tex document and pdflatex ran fine on it (but not showing that much space unfortunately).
So, I came up with the following fix:
use the latex directive \quad or \qquad:
title(sprintf('residuals,\\quad $max_x(\\vert s-f\\vert) = %.3f$', max(abs(f(g)-runge(g)))));
This will give you more space than a normal space.
EDIT: For this to work you need the interpreter of matlab to be set to "latex" instead of the default "tex". Do this by changing the title to
title(title_string, 'Interpreter', 'latex')
or by setting (globally for that script)
set(groot, 'defaultTextInterpreter', 'latex')