[reportlab-users] Printing Variable Length String

[timr at probo.com]

On Sat, Nov 03, 2007 at 10:33:24AM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:

> 

>    Here's the situation. For the cover page of the model report I retrieve 8

> strings from a one-line database table. One of these strings is the project

> description, and it can be of any length. What I'm trying to do is print the

> field names and values on the page something like this:

> 

>  	Field 1:	Contents

>  	Field 2:	Contents ....

>  			.............

>  			...........

>  	Field 3:	Contents

> 

> etc. Field 2 is the one of variable length.

> 

>    I can use the canvas' stringWidth() method to find the length of the Field

> 2 string, but I've not identified a Python or ReportLab function to wrap

> that string to multiple lines and allow me to identify the new Y coordinate

> for the next line.

> 

>    What options do I have available? Would this one page be best printed as a

> table in a platypus story?


It's possible to use a platypus Paragraph in an isolated context to do
this word-wrapping, but it really isn't that hard to do word-wrapping
on your own.  You can split() the string on white space, and keep adding
words one at a time until the stringWidth() exceeds the length you want,
and then back off one word.
-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boeklheide, Inc.