[reportlab-users] Underline String in Graphics

[Nathalie Steinmetz]

Hi,

I realize that I can underline text within Paragraphs using <u></u>. For text within Graphics, in String objects, the recommendation seems to have been to draw a Line underneath the String.

Is this still the way to go, or is there an easier way to have underlined text in graphics?

Thanks!

Nathalie

--

Nathalie Steinmetz

Senior Software Engineer

Jolt Labs

[Robin Becker]

On 25/03/2015 20:43, Nathalie Steinmetz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I realize that I can underline text within Paragraphs using <u></u>. For text within Graphics, in String objects, the recommendation seems to have been to draw a Line underneath the String.
>
> Is this still the way to go, or is there an easier way to have underlined text in graphics?
>

Hi Nathalie,

nothing prevents you from using Paragraph / XPreformatted to do your own drawing
of complex strings. It's a bit more difficult, but see the end of this program
for an example

###############################################################################
from reportlab.pdfbase.ttfonts import TTFont
from reportlab.pdfbase.pdfmetrics import registerFont
from reportlab.pdfgen.canvas import Canvas
from reportlab.lib.colors import green, pink, lightblue, red
from reportlab.platypus import XPreformatted
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet
registerFont(TTFont("Vera", "Vera.ttf"))
registerFont(TTFont("VeraBI", "VeraBI.ttf"))

c = Canvas('helloworld.pdf', pagesize=(300,500))
c.setFont('Vera', 10)
c.drawString(100, 200, u'Hello World')

c.showPage()
c.setPageSize((400,600))
c.setFont('Vera', 20)
c.setFillColor(green)
c.drawString(100, 300, u'Hello World')

c.showPage()
c.setPageSize((400,600))

sss = getSampleStyleSheet()
normal = sss['Normal']
xpre = XPreformatted('<font color="red">Red</font> <u>underliney</u>',normal)

w,h = xpre.wrap(0,0)

c.saveState()
#draw lines to show what's going on
c.setDash(2,2)
c.setStrokeColor(green)
c.setLineWidth(0.01)
c.line(72,100,72+w,100)
c.setStrokeColor(red)
c.line(72,100+h,72+w,100+h)
c.restoreState()
xpre.drawOn(c,72,100)

c.save()
###############################################################################

the main code is
xpre = XPreformatted('<font color="red">Red</font> <u>underliney</u>',normal)
w,h = xpre.wrap(0x7fffffff,0x7fffffff)
xpre.drawOn(c,72,100)

ie set up the styled text object, wrap and obtain the size. Note that the
wrap(0,0) trick will likely not work with Paragraphs as they need a width to do
their actual wrapping. The XPreformatted returns the max of the available width
and the required width.

> Thanks!
> Nathalie
>
>
> --
> Nathalie Steinmetz
> Senior Software Engineer
>
> Jolt Labs

--
Robin Becker
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[Nathalie Steinmetz]

Hi Robin,

thanks for your response! And for the example, I wasn’t aware about XPreformatted…

Unfortunately I am not able to use the XPreformatted object - I am not drawing directly on the canvas, but am creating a Drawing object to which I add shapes (Rect, Path, String) from the graphics module (from reportlab.graphics.shapes import Drawing, Rect, Path, String). Those String shape objects don’t seem to allow for much formatting, and all I can add as text is plain text. I can do bold and italic by using a bold or italic font, but that approach doesn’t work for underline.

Sorry for not having been clear enough about this before! Do you know of any better way to underline such strings, instead of drawing a line underneath?

Thanks,
Nathalie

[Nathalie Steinmetz]

I ended up implementing it with adding a Line underneath the String:

#####################################
from reportlab.graphics.shapes import Drawing, Line, String
drawing = Drawing()
string = String(x, y, text,
textAnchor='start',
fontName=‘Helvetica',
fontSize=9))
drawing.add(string)
x_start = string.getEast()
drawing.add(Line(x_start, y - 2, x, y - 2))
#####################################

cheers,
Nathalie