default properties for axis label objects

[John W. Eaton]

I was recently asked about setting the default value of the "rotation"
property for y-axis labels to 0 instead of 90, so that all new plots
would have the y-axis label oriented the same as the x-axis label.
Currently, the y-axis label is always rotated 90 degrees
counterclockwise.

It seems there is no way to do this for Octave because each time an
axis object is created, new text objects are created for the x-, y-,
and z-axis labels and with all the factory default settings and there
is code in axes::properties::init in src/graphics.cc that explicitly sets the
rotation property for the y-axis label to 90.  So I see no way to set
defaults, at least in Octave.  Is there some way to accomplish this
task in Matlab?  If so, how?

jwe