[reportlab-users] Re: How to use textobject.setTextTransform()

[Andy Robinson]

> Jerome Alet <alet@librelogiciel.com> wrote, in part:
> >Are you sure that you need to call this method [setTextTransform] ?
> 
> Nope. :o)
> 
> I've been playing with ReportLab for only a day or two. However, 
> I feel that participating in discussions can make me learn 
> quicker if only out of embarrassment. Thanks for the suggestions!
> 
> Bill
More discussion is welcome!

The 'coordinate transform' parameters are very well known in
the area of graphics programming and affine geometry.  They are
six elements of a 9-element matrix which can represent and 
combination of translate, rotate, scale and skew (the other
3 elements are zero).  But anyone programming this stuff
ALWAYS spends an hour or two getting minus signs wrong,
flipiong stuff off the page and so on :-)  So I strongly
recommend using the 'skew','translate','rotate' and so on,
which do what they say; you only need to worry about the
order in which they are applied.

The transform method IS useful if you are already doing
this stuff elsewhere - e.g. embedding ReportLab in
some drawing package or graphics engine - where your
starting point probably is such a matrix.

Thanks,

Andy