The matplotlib.text.Text
instances have a variety of
properties which can be configured via keyword arguments to the text
commands (e.g., title()
,
xlabel()
and text()
).
Property | Value Type |
---|---|
alpha | float |
backgroundcolor | any matplotlib color |
bbox | Rectangle prop dict plus key 'pad' which is a pad in points |
clip_box | a matplotlib.transform.Bbox instance |
clip_on | [True | False] |
clip_path | a Path instance and a Transform instance, a Patch |
color | any matplotlib color |
family | [ 'serif' | 'sans-serif' | 'cursive' | 'fantasy' | 'monospace' ] |
fontproperties | a FontProperties instance |
horizontalalignment or ha | [ 'center' | 'right' | 'left' ] |
label | any string |
linespacing | float |
multialignment | ['left' | 'right' | 'center' ] |
name or fontname | string e.g., ['Sans' | 'Courier' | 'Helvetica' ...] |
picker | [None|float|boolean|callable] |
position | (x, y) |
rotation | [ angle in degrees | 'vertical' | 'horizontal' ] |
size or fontsize | [ size in points | relative size, e.g., 'smaller' , 'x-large' ] |
style or fontstyle | [ 'normal' | 'italic' | 'oblique' ] |
text | string or anything printable with ‘%s’ conversion |
transform | a Transform instance |
variant | [ 'normal' | 'small-caps' ] |
verticalalignment or va | [ 'center' | 'top' | 'bottom' | 'baseline' ] |
visible | [True | False] |
weight or fontweight | [ 'normal' | 'bold' | 'heavy' | 'light' | 'ultrabold' | 'ultralight' ] |
x | float |
y | float |
zorder | any number |
You can lay out text with the alignment arguments
horizontalalignment
, verticalalignment
, and
multialignment
. horizontalalignment
controls whether the x
positional argument for the text indicates the left, center or right
side of the text bounding box. verticalalignment
controls whether
the y positional argument for the text indicates the bottom, center or
top side of the text bounding box. multialignment
, for newline
separated strings only, controls whether the different lines are left,
center or right justified. Here is an example which uses the
text()
command to show the various alignment
possibilities. The use of transform=ax.transAxes
throughout the
code indicates that the coordinates are given relative to the axes
bounding box, with 0,0 being the lower left of the axes and 1,1 the
upper right.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.patches as patches
# build a rectangle in axes coords
left, width = .25, .5
bottom, height = .25, .5
right = left + width
top = bottom + height
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_axes([0,0,1,1])
# axes coordinates are 0,0 is bottom left and 1,1 is upper right
p = patches.Rectangle(
(left, bottom), width, height,
fill=False, transform=ax.transAxes, clip_on=False
)
ax.add_patch(p)
ax.text(left, bottom, 'left top',
horizontalalignment='left',
verticalalignment='top',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(left, bottom, 'left bottom',
horizontalalignment='left',
verticalalignment='bottom',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(right, top, 'right bottom',
horizontalalignment='right',
verticalalignment='bottom',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(right, top, 'right top',
horizontalalignment='right',
verticalalignment='top',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(right, bottom, 'center top',
horizontalalignment='center',
verticalalignment='top',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(left, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'right center',
horizontalalignment='right',
verticalalignment='center',
rotation='vertical',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(left, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'left center',
horizontalalignment='left',
verticalalignment='center',
rotation='vertical',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(0.5*(left+right), 0.5*(bottom+top), 'middle',
horizontalalignment='center',
verticalalignment='center',
fontsize=20, color='red',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(right, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'centered',
horizontalalignment='center',
verticalalignment='center',
rotation='vertical',
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(left, top, 'rotated\nwith newlines',
horizontalalignment='center',
verticalalignment='center',
rotation=45,
transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.set_axis_off()
plt.show()
(Source code, png, pdf)
The base default font is controlled by a set of rcParams:
rcParam | usage |
---|---|
'font.family' |
List of either names of font or {'cursive',
'fantasy', 'monospace', 'sans', 'sans serif',
'sans-serif', 'serif'} . |
'font.style' |
The default style, ex 'normal' ,
'italic' . |
'font.variant' |
Default variant, ex 'normal' , 'small-caps'
(untested) |
'font.stretch' |
Default stretch, ex 'normal' , 'condensed'
(incomplete) |
'font.weight' |
Default weight. Either string or integer |
'font.size' |
Default font size in points. Relative font sizes
('large' , 'x-small' ) are computed against
this size. |
The mapping between the family aliases ({'cursive', 'fantasy',
'monospace', 'sans', 'sans serif', 'sans-serif', 'serif'}
) and actual font names
is controlled by the following rcParams:
family alias | rcParam with mappings |
---|---|
'serif' |
'font.serif' |
'monospace' |
'font.monospace' |
'fantasy' |
'font.fantasy' |
'cursive' |
'font.cursive' |
{'sans', 'sans serif', 'sans-serif'} |
'font.sans-serif' |
which are lists of font names.
As of v2.0 the default font contains glyphs for many western alphabets, but still does not cover all of the glyphs that may be required by mpl users. For example, DejaVu has no coverage of Chinese, Korean, or Japanese.
To set the default font to be one that supports the code points you
need, prepend the font name to 'font.family'
or the desired alias
lists
matplotlib.rcParams['font.sans-serif'] = ['Source Han Sans TW', 'sans-serif']
or set it in your .matplotlibrc
file:
font.sans-serif: Source Han Sans TW, Ariel, sans-serif
To control the font used on per-artist basis use the 'name'
,
'fontname'
or 'fontproperties'
kwargs documented above.
On linux, fc-list can be a useful tool to discover the font name; for example
$ fc-list :lang=zh family
Source Han Sans TW,思源黑體 TW,思源黑體 TW ExtraLight,Source Han Sans TW ExtraLight
Source Han Sans TW,思源黑體 TW,思源黑體 TW Regular,Source Han Sans TW Regular
Droid Sans Fallback
Source Han Sans TW,思源黑體 TW,思源黑體 TW Bold,Source Han Sans TW Bold
Source Han Sans TW,思源黑體 TW,思源黑體 TW Medium,Source Han Sans TW Medium
Source Han Sans TW,思源黑體 TW,思源黑體 TW Normal,Source Han Sans TW Normal
Fixed
Source Han Sans TW,思源黑體 TW,思源黑體 TW Heavy,Source Han Sans TW Heavy
Source Han Sans TW,思源黑體 TW,思源黑體 TW Light,Source Han Sans TW Light
lists all of the fonts that support Chinese.