[reportlab-users] Bounded text (truncated)

[Robin Becker]

Tim Roberts 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?

>>   

> 

> This question started me to thinking -- always a dangerous thing.

> 

> Postscript fully supports path clipping.  Does the PDF subset support

> that as well?  One way to implement what he describes would be to

> establish a clipping rectangle, then draw the text, then free the

> clipping rectangle.

> 

That's another way to do it. And there's an example of just that in the output 
of test_pdfgen_general.py where a clipping path derived from the word Python is 
used to mask some underlying stuff. The code looks like this c is the canvas

	#first the outline
	c.saveState()
	t = c.beginText(inch, 3.0 * inch)
	t.setFont('Helvetica-BoldOblique',108)
	t.setTextRenderMode(5)	#stroke and add to path
	t.textLine('Python!')
	t.setTextRenderMode(0)
	c.drawText(t)	 #this will make a clipping mask

	#now some small stuff which wil be drawn into the current clip mask
	t = c.beginText(inch, 4 * inch)
	t.setFont('Times-Roman',6)
	t.textLines((('spam ' * 40) + '\n') * 15)
	c.drawText(t)

	#now reset canvas to get rid of the clipping mask
	c.restoreState()

Clearly we could have used a more normal clipping path setup eg

	p = c.beginPath()
	#make a chessboard effect, 1 cm squares
	for i in range(14):
		x0 = (3 + i) * cm
		for j in range(7):
			y0 = (16 + j) * cm
			p.rect(x0, y0, 0.85*cm, 0.85*cm)
	c.addLiteral('%Begin clip path')
	c.clipPath(p)
	c.addLiteral('%End clip path')



-- 
Robin Becker