How insert squares to figure xlabels and reduce text distance?

Hello! My figure contain transparent and less tarnsparent bars and I would like to add a xlabel with such symbols ◼️☐ and put them close together.

I have found already a solution for storing such symbols in the script by putting them into a mat-file but I don't find an all-over solutuon because I can't reduce the spacing between such symbols with tex interpreter and when using latex interpreter I can't generate the squares.

The result should look like:

My Latex text is for example:

text='ROM $\blacksquare${}$\square$';
xlabel(text,'interpreter','latex');

Thanks a lot!

[dpb]

Whether you can manage to make the packages work with the ML implementation is unknown and wouldn't put high odds on it, but you might look at https://texfaq.org/FAQ-letterspace

AFAIK, the only "simple" way would be to place the text character-by-character with the x,y location with text

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Why not just use legend? That's what it's designed to do (if I understand your question correctly).

%Example
cla()
b1 = bar([1,2],[5,10], 'FaceColor', 'b','FaceAlpha',.5); 
hold on
b2 = bar([1,2],[3,8], 'FaceColor', 'r','FaceAlpha',.5);
xlabel('ROM')
legend([b1,b2],{'left','right'},'Orientation', 'horizontal','location', 'southoutside')

If you just want a white box and black box,

cla()
xlabel('ROM ◼️☐') % *

*When you copy/paste this into the command window or a script, 3 boxes will appear instead of two. Delete the middle one.