Text

The TEXT entity (DXF Reference) represents a single line of text. The style attribute stores the associated Textstyle entity as string, which defines the basic font properties. The text size is stored as cap-height in the height attribute in drawing units. Text alignments are defined as enums of type ezdxf.enums.TextEntityAlignment.

See also

See the documentation for the Textstyle class to understand the limitations of text representation in the DXF format.

Tutorial for Text

Subclass of	`ezdxf.entities.DXFGraphic`
DXF type	`'TEXT'`
Factory function	`ezdxf.layouts.BaseLayout.add_text()`
Inherited DXF attributes	Common graphical DXF attributes

Warning

Do not instantiate entity classes by yourself - always use the provided factory functions!

class ezdxf.entities.Text

dxf.text: Text content as string.

dxf.insert: First alignment point of text (2D/3D Point in OCS), relevant for the adjustments LEFT, ALIGNED and FIT.

dxf.align_point: The main alignment point of text (2D/3D Point in OCS), if the alignment is anything else than LEFT, or the second alignment point for the ALIGNED and FIT alignments.

dxf.height: Text height in drawing units as float value, the default value is 1.

dxf.rotation: Text rotation in degrees as float value, the default value is 0.

dxf.oblique: Text oblique angle (slanting) in degrees as float value, the default value is 0 (straight vertical text).

dxf.style: Textstyle name as case insensitive string, the default value is “Standard”

dxf.width: Width scale factor as float value, the default value is 1.

dxf.halign

Horizontal alignment flag as int value, use the set_placement() and get_align_enum() methods to handle text alignment, the default value is 0.

0	Left
2	Right
3	Aligned (if vertical alignment = 0)
4	Middle (if vertical alignment = 0)
5	Fit (if vertical alignment = 0)

dxf.valign

Vertical alignment flag as int value, use the set_placement() and get_align_enum() methods to handle text alignment, the default value is 0.

0	Baseline
1	Bottom
2	Middle
3	Top

dxf.text_generation_flag

Text generation flags as int value, use the is_backward and is_upside_down attributes to handle this flags.

2	text is backward (mirrored in X)
4	text is upside down (mirrored in Y)

property is_backward: bool: Get/set text generation flag BACKWARDS, for mirrored text along the x-axis.

property is_upside_down: bool: Get/set text generation flag UPSIDE_DOWN, for mirrored text along the y-axis.

set_placement(p1: UVec, p2: UVec | None = None, align: TextEntityAlignment | None = None) → Text

Set text alignment and location.

The alignments ALIGNED and FIT are special, they require a second alignment point, the text is aligned on the virtual line between these two points and sits vertically at the baseline.

ALIGNED: Text is stretched or compressed to fit exactly between p1 and p2 and the text height is also adjusted to preserve height/width ratio.
FIT: Text is stretched or compressed to fit exactly between p1 and p2 but only the text width is adjusted, the text height is fixed by the dxf.height attribute.
MIDDLE: also a special adjustment, centered text like MIDDLE_CENTER, but vertically centred at the total height of the text.

Parameters:

p1 – first alignment point as (x, y[, z])
p2 – second alignment point as (x, y[, z]), required for ALIGNED and FIT else ignored
align – new alignment as enum TextEntityAlignment, None to preserve the existing alignment.

get_placement() → tuple[TextEntityAlignment, Vec3, Vec3 | None]: Returns a tuple (align, p1, p2), align is the alignment enum TextEntityAlignment, p1 is the alignment point, p2 is only relevant if align is ALIGNED or FIT, otherwise it is None.

get_align_enum() → TextEntityAlignment: Returns the current text alignment as TextEntityAlignment, see also set_placement().

set_align_enum(align=TextEntityAlignment.LEFT) → Text

Just for experts: Sets the text alignment without setting the alignment points, set adjustment points attr:dxf.insert and dxf.align_point manually.

Parameters:: align – TextEntityAlignment

transform(m: Matrix44) → Text: Transform the TEXT entity by transformation matrix m inplace.

translate(dx: float, dy: float, dz: float) → Text: Optimized TEXT/ATTRIB/ATTDEF translation about dx in x-axis, dy in y-axis and dz in z-axis, returns self.

plain_text() → str: Returns text content without formatting codes.

font_name() → str: Returns the font name of the associated Textstyle.

fit_length() → float: Returns the text length for alignments TextEntityAlignment.FIT and TextEntityAlignment.ALIGNED, defined by the distance from the insertion point to the align point or 0 for all other alignments.