[reportlab-users] Bounded text (truncated)

[Michael Hipp]

Thanks, Robin. I think the simpler first case will do what I need for how.

Thanks again,
Michael

Robin Becker wrote:

> Michael Hipp wrote:

>> Hello,

>>

>> I'm fairly new to ReportLab. Thanks for a great tool.

>>

>> I'm trying to find a way to print "bounded" text. Meaning I want the "field" 

>> it is printed in to be a certain specified size and never exceed that size. If 

>> a text value is printed that would go beyond that size, then the text should 

>> be truncated.

>>

>> Is there some simple way to accomplish this?

> ......

> 

> Maybe not simple. There are ways to do this for two cases. One where you just 

> want a single line of text and another where you want something like a paragraph 

> with specified width.

> 

> In the first case it would be something like this.

> 

> from reportlab.pdfbase.pdfmetrics import stringWidth

> t = "this is my very long and disreputable text ... boring etc etc etc"

> fontName='Times-Roman'

> fontSize=12

> desired = 2*72 # two inches

> while t and stringWidth(t,fontName,fontSize)>desired:

> 	t = t[:-1]

> 

> print t

> 

> which eventually prints "this is my very long and disre". This could better be 

> done using binary search, but that I leave as an exercise.

> 

> The paragraph case can be treated similarly, but it's probably worth doing more 

> efficiently using the built in mechanisms of paragraphs.

> 

> ########################

> text = """this is my very long and disreputable text ... boring etc etc etc I go 

> on and on and on for days and weeks and months"""

> 

> from reportlab.platypus.paragraph import Paragraph

> from reportlab.lib.styles import ParagraphStyle

> normal = ParagraphStyle('normal')

> normal.firstLineIndent = 18

> normal.spaceBefore = 0

> normal.spaceAfter = 0

> dW = 2*72 #2 inches

> dH = 0.5*72 #0.5 inch

> para = Paragraph(text,normal)

> w,h = para.wrap(dW,dH)

> 

> print 'desired=%sx%s wanted=%sx%s' % (dW,dH,w,h)

> if h>dH+1e-8:

> 	S = para.split(dW,dH)

> 	print 'split returned %d elements' % len(S)

> 	if len(S)>=1:

> 		para = S[0]

> 		w,h = para.wrap(dW,dH)

> 		print 'desired=%sx%s new wanted=%sx%s' % (dW,dH,w,h)

> 		print '\n'.join([' '.join(x[1]) for x in para.blPara.lines])

> 	else:

> 		print "can't hack that paragraph into size"