[reportlab-users] Truncate table cell content to end with ellipsis

[Robin Becker]

Yves Forkl wrote:

> Robin Becker schrieb:

>>

>> if you cannot use the broken fragline stuff to locate the position 

>> where the text should be ended then you'll need to brute force the 

>> search. A good approach uses a binary search to determine where the 

>> split should occur eg [...]

> 

> Thank you for the function locateSplit you proposed. In the meantime, I 

> had come up with a function that follows very much the same line of 

> thought (but shortens and appends the ellipsis as well):

> 

> def fitIntoTableCell(content, columnWidth, fontName, fontSize):

>     _c = canvas.Canvas('nofile.pdf')

>     # reduce actual column width a bit, to account for padding etc.

>     columnWidth -= 5

>     contentWidth = _c.stringWidth(content, fontName, fontSize)

>     shortened = False

>     # if the content is wider than the cell, cut off enough from it so

>     # that the ellipsis fits in, too

>     if contentWidth > columnWidth:

>         shortened = True

>         # take width of ellipsis into account; empirically determined

>         # with fontName == Helvetica and fontSize == 12 (should

>         # rather be calaculated from these parameters)

>         columnWidthBeforeEllipsis = columnWidth - 7

>         while contentWidth > columnWidthBeforeEllipsis:

>             # cutting by single characters because words might be too

>             # long

>             content = content[:-1]

>             contentWidth = _c.stringWidth(content, fontName, fontSize)

>     del _c

>     if shortened:

>         content += u'\u2026'

>     return content

> 

> I wonder how I could do without the dummy canvas, though...

> 

>   Yves

........
you can import stringWidth directly eg

from reportlab.pdfbase.pdfmetrics import stringWidth

then change _c.stringWidth to stringWidth

-- 
Robin Becker