This is a duplicate of bug #49216, which has indeed been present for a while. Closing this report and marking as dependent on 49216.

I think this behavior has been present for a while (i.e. in previous versions of Octave < 8.2), but I'm just reporting it now.

For some fonts (Calibri and Cambria and probably others), and some sizes (11 through 17), the on-screen display in plots (titles, xlabel, ylabel, xticks, yticks) is gibberish. BUT the printed files are fine. The code below (and identical attached script) reproduce the problem.

figure;
plot(1:10, 1:10);
xlabel('xlabel'); ylabel('ylabel'); title('title');
set(gca, 'FontName', 'Calibri');
set(gca, 'FontSize', 12); % display screwy for sizes 11-17
print('printed_file.png');
+verbatim+

Attached file 'screen_cap.png' shows the gibberish text displayed. And 'printed_file.png' shows legible text.