The original issue is fixed, but since there is some discussion of another issue, along with screenshots and file attachments, I am going to re-purpose this report.

I have re-titled the report to be about the legend text be placed on the same baseline, and have made this a Feature Request.  This doesn't need to be fixed immediately, if ever.

The line heights are now equal which is great.  Is it also possible to have the text at the same level?

The results for Matlab

file matlab_abcd_legend.png

show that the text uses the same baseline

The result for Octave

file octave_abcd_legend.png

show that the text rises and falls based on what letter is used.

The lines which make up the key of the legend object are placed at different heights depending on what the text is.  Ideally, all the lines should be at the same height.

Code I used for testing is attached and also presented here:

plot (rand (3,4));
legend ({'a','b','c','d'}, 'location', 'north', 'orientation', 'horizontal')
print legend.png

For what it's worth, this is not a regression.  The existing code messes this up as well.