text, usetex=true setting renders the axis labels as well

Question

I tried rendering some TeX in a figure today but it didn't work. I realized, text.usetex in the matplotlibrc file was set to False. When I add rc('text', usetex=True) to my script, the axis labels are rendered as TeX as well which is undesirable. I don't remember ever having to set this before matplotlib 1.3.0 and I definitely don't remember any difficulty rendering TeX.

Anyone else experiencing this behavior?

Example:

import matplotlib.patheffects as PathEffects

# matplotlib.rc('text', usetex=True)

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(4,4))
ax = fig.add_axes([0,0,0.9,1])
ax.imshow(randn(20,20))
txt = ax.text(0.1, 0.5, r"Some \LaTeX\ $\alpha=\beta$", transform=ax.transAxes,fontsize=16)
txt.set_path_effects([PathEffects.Stroke(linewidth=3, foreground="w"), PathEffects.Normal()])

Produces:

Uncommenting the `matplotlib.rc('text', usetex=True)' line, produces:

Answer 1

Your 'question' isn't really a question, but I am assuming you are having the following issue:

You want to add some text to the plot using either a latex font, or just to add maths without using rc('text', usetex=True) (note that in the default rcparams file it states that this affects all text).

This can be done:

import matplotlib.pylab as plt

fig = plt.figure()
plt.annotate(r"$\mathcal{G}r \epsilon \epsilon \kappa$", xy=(5, 2), size=26)
plt.annotate(r"default font", xy=(2, 5), size=16)
plt.annotate(r"latex font", xy=(2, 7), size=20, family='computer modern roman')
plt.plot(range(10))
plt.xlabel("some string")

Hope that helps somewhat!