# How to get the astronomic aries-Symbol in xlabel?

**URL:** <https://scilab.discourse.group/t/how-to-get-the-astronomic-aries-symbol-in-xlabel/636>\
**Category:** Graphics and plotting\
**Created:** [September 12, 2024, 12:57pm UTC](https://scilab.discourse.group/t/how-to-get-the-astronomic-aries-symbol-in-xlabel/636 "2024-09-12T12:57:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jens](https://scilab.discourse.group/u/Jens)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2024, 12:57pm UTC](https://scilab.discourse.group/t/how-to-get-the-astronomic-aries-symbol-in-xlabel/636/1 "2024-09-12T12:57:57Z")

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Hallo Scilab experts,  
is there a way to put the astronomic aries-symbol into xlabel?  
Regards Jens

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**Author:** ![mottelet](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/scilab.discourse.group/mottelet/32/13_2.png) [@mottelet](https://scilab.discourse.group/u/mottelet)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 6:37am UTC](https://scilab.discourse.group/t/how-to-get-the-astronomic-aries-symbol-in-xlabel/636/2 "2024-09-13T06:37:24Z")

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Hello and welcome to Scilab’s Discourse.

This character is well defined in the Unicode system ([“♈” U+2648 Aries Unicode Character](https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2648)) and its actual UTF-8 hexadecimal sequence is `0xE2 0x99 0x88`. You can obtain this character with

```auto

--> ascii(hex2dec(["E2" "99" "88"]))

 ans = 

  "♈"

```

Anyway, Scilab handles UTF-8 strings natively, so you can copy/paste any Unicode character, e.g. from a web page, then use it as any other character:

```auto
clf
xstring(0.5,0.5,"Aries is ♈")
gce().font_size=10;
gce().text_box_mode="centered"

```

 ![Screenshot 2024-09-13 at 08.36.55](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/utc/original/1X/bedf4035f60cc75f8d213acc5438db8f611b264e.jpeg)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jens](https://scilab.discourse.group/u/Jens)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:09am UTC](https://scilab.discourse.group/t/how-to-get-the-astronomic-aries-symbol-in-xlabel/636/3 "2024-09-13T07:09:08Z")

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Thanks a lot, mottelet,  
This works perfectly. The only flaw is that the symbol appears in the editor as a square what is somehow cryptic. The file is encoded in unicode\>utf-8. Is there a remedy?

A way to make it easier to understand later would be:

```auto
aries=ascii(hex2dec(["E2" "99" "88"]))
zlabel('$'+aries+'$')

```

There seems to be an encoding problem here too! aries is enclosed in dollar characters between quotes.

Regards Jens

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mottelet](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/scilab.discourse.group/mottelet/32/13_2.png) [@mottelet](https://scilab.discourse.group/u/mottelet)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 9:41am UTC](https://scilab.discourse.group/t/how-to-get-the-astronomic-aries-symbol-in-xlabel/636/4 "2024-09-13T09:41:26Z")

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Verify that the encoding of ScilNotes is actually utf-8:

 ![Screenshot 2024-09-13 at 11.40.43](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/utc/original/1X/0d3a4049c17dd2c4f57e10a482031af6e9767189.jpeg)

with Scilab 2024.1 Windows version, I can see the character:

 ![Screenshot 2024-09-13 at 11.38.34](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/utc/original/1X/796613ace53606a1b084840a3ea11d81981aac68.png)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jens](https://scilab.discourse.group/u/Jens)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 9:51am UTC](https://scilab.discourse.group/t/how-to-get-the-astronomic-aries-symbol-in-xlabel/636/5 "2024-09-13T09:51:45Z")

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> [@mottelet](#):
>
> Verify that the encoding of ScilNotes is actually utf-8

You were faster.  
I verified that the encoding of ScilNotes is actually utf-8. Encoding seems to be a general pain in the ass. I can live with the workaround which I wouldn’t have found without your help.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mottelet](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/scilab.discourse.group/mottelet/32/13_2.png) [@mottelet](https://scilab.discourse.group/u/mottelet)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 10:07am UTC](https://scilab.discourse.group/t/how-to-get-the-astronomic-aries-symbol-in-xlabel/636/6 "2024-09-13T10:07:05Z")

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> [@Jens](#):
>
> ```auto
> zlabel('$'+aries+'$')
> 
> ```

in that case you are rendering the string with the LaTeX interpreter, this is somewhat different form using the default text interpreter.

S.