comment #7:

> I just answered a question on stackoverflow which referred to this bugreport (here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/67174926/4183191 ) where I had pointed out that a 'main window' title is simply a title in an empty 'main' axes object, i.e.
>

> axes( 'visible', 'off', 'title', 'This is the main title' );

>
> I was pretty sure that this is the obvious way to add a main title, but seeing the comments here suggest alternatives, now I'm not so sure. Perhaps a bespoke sgtitle function might be a good idea after all...
>

This is the only solution reported here that works, thanks!

Comment #5 gives a decent work around, though I agree that it is not perfect. It took me a bit to figure out that text position attached to a figure is from -1 to 1 in x and y instead of 0 to 1, as is used to position axes (at least before an axis is placed).

ht = text(0,0.98,'sgtitle text','parent',gcf,'horizontalalignment','center','verticalalignment','top');

The above places it at the top of a blank figure.

However, if I place this text before a subplot (e.g. subplot(5,5,3)), then the text moves position as soon as the subplot is created: relative to the axes position now (in data units of the placed axis). Text placed after an axes is created, then even with the figure as parent it is positioned relative to the data units of the last axes.

The parent of the sgtitle text is the figure. The parent of the standard title is the axes object. The parents of each of the subplot axes objects are also the figure.

It's a little more than just placing a single text object correctly. It also changes existing and new subplot sizes to give room for that text object so that it doesn't interfere with other titles or subplots.

As of 2018b, Matlab has a new function, 'sgtitle'. It would be nice if Octave had it too. It creates a single title centered at the top of the figure for a plot window with subplots, which could have their own separate titles via 'title'. A very handy function that I've had to do some odd workarounds to get similar functionality in the past.