Text properties and layout

Controlling properties of text and its layout with Matplotlib.

The matplotlib.text.Text instances have a variety of
properties which can be configured via keyword arguments to the text
commands (e.g., title(),
xlabel() and text()).

Property
Value Type

alpha
[[float](https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/ImageMath.html#float)](https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/ImageMath.html#float)

background color
any matplotlib color

bbox
Rectangle prop dict plus key ‘pad’ which is a pad in points

clip_box
a matplotlib.transform.Bbox instance

clip_on
bool

clip_path
a Path instance and a Transform instance, a Patch

color
any matplotlib color

family
[ ‘serif’ | ‘sans-serif’ | ‘cursive’ | ‘fantasy’ | ‘monospace’ ]

fontproperties
a FontProperties instance

horizontalalignment or ha
[ ‘center’ | ‘right’ | ‘left’ ]

label
any string

linespacing
float

multialignment
[‘left’ | ‘right’ | ‘center’ ]

name or fontname
string e.g., [‘Sans’ | ‘Courier’ | ‘Helvetica’ …]

picker
[None|float|boolean|callable]

position
(x, y)

rotation
[ angle in degrees | ‘vertical’ | ‘horizontal’ ]

size or fontsize
[ size in points | relative size, e.g., ‘smaller’, ‘x-large’ ]

style or fontstyle
[ ‘normal’ | ‘italic’ | ‘oblique’ ]

text
string or anything printable with ‘%s’ conversion

transform
a Transform instance

variant
[ ‘normal’ | ‘small-caps’ ]

verticalalignment or va
[ ‘center’ | ‘top’ | ‘bottom’ | ‘baseline’ ]

visible
bool

x
float

y
float

zorder
any number

You can lay out text with the alignment arguments
horizontalalignment, verticalalignment, and
multialignment. horizontalalignment controls whether the x
positional argument for the text indicates the left, center or right
side of the text bounding box. verticalalignment controls whether
the y positional argument for the text indicates the bottom, center or
top side of the text bounding box. multialignment, for newline
separated strings only, controls whether the different lines are left,
center or right justified. Here is an example which uses the
text() command to show the various alignment
possibilities. The use of transform=ax.transAxes throughout the
code indicates that the coordinates are given relative to the axes
bounding box, with 0,0 being the lower left of the axes and 1,1 the
upper right.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.patches as patches

# build a rectangle in axes coords
left, width = .25, .5
bottom, height = .25, .5
right = left + width
top = bottom + height

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_axes([0, 0, 1, 1])

# axes coordinates are 0,0 is bottom left and 1,1 is upper right
p = patches.Rectangle(
    (left, bottom), width, height,
    fill=False, transform=ax.transAxes, clip_on=False
    )

ax.add_patch(p)

ax.text(left, bottom, 'left top',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, bottom, 'left bottom',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='bottom',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, top, 'right bottom',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='bottom',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, top, 'right top',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, bottom, 'center top',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'right center',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'left center',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(0.5*(left+right), 0.5*(bottom+top), 'middle',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        fontsize=20, color='red',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'centered',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, top, 'rotated\nwith newlines',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation=45,
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.set_axis_off()
plt.show()

sphx_glr_text_props_001

Default Font

The base default font is controlled by a set of rcParams. To set the font
for mathematical expressions, use the rcParams beginning with mathtext
(see mathtext).

rcParam
usage

‘font.family’
List of either names of font or {‘cursive’,
‘fantasy’, ‘monospace’, ‘sans’, ‘sans serif’,
‘sans-serif’, ‘serif’}.

‘font.style’
The default style, ex ‘normal’,
‘italic’.

‘font.variant’
Default variant, ex ‘normal’, ‘small-caps’
(untested)

‘font.stretch’
Default stretch, ex ‘normal’, ‘condensed’
(incomplete)

‘font.weight’
Default weight. Either string or integer

‘font.size’
Default font size in points. Relative font sizes
(‘large’, ‘x-small’) are computed against
this size.

The mapping between the family aliases ({'cursive', 'fantasy', 'monospace', 'sans', 'sans serif', 'sans-serif', 'serif'}) and actual font names
is controlled by the following rcParams:

family alias
rcParam with mappings

‘serif’
‘font.serif’

‘monospace’
‘font.monospace’

‘fantasy’
‘font.fantasy’

‘cursive’
‘font.cursive’

{‘sans’, ‘sans serif’, ‘sans-serif’}
‘font.sans-serif’

which are lists of font names.

Text with non-latin glyphs

As of v2.0 the default font contains
glyphs for many western alphabets, but still does not cover all of the
glyphs that may be required by mpl users. For example, DejaVu has no
coverage of Chinese, Korean, or Japanese.

To set the default font to be one that supports the code points you
need, prepend the font name to 'font.family' or the desired alias
lists

1	matplotlib.rcParams['font.sans-serif'] = ['Source Han Sans TW', 'sans-serif']

or set it in your .matplotlibrc file:

1	font.sans-serif: Source Han Sans TW, Arial, sans-serif

To control the font used on per-artist basis use the 'name',
'fontname' or 'fontproperties' kwargs documented above.

On linux, fc-list can be a
useful tool to discover the font name; for example

$ fc-list :lang=zh family
Noto to Sans Mono CJK TC,Noto Sans Mono CJK TC Bold
Noto Sans CJK TC,Noto Sans CJK TC Medium
Noto Sans CJK TC,Noto Sans CJK TC DemiLight
Noto Sans CJK KR,Noto Sans CJK KR Black
Noto Sans CJK TC,Noto Sans CJK TC Black
Noto Sans Mono CJK TC,Noto Sans Mono CJK TC Regular
Noto Sans CJK SC,Noto Sans CJK SC Light

lists all of the fonts that support Chinese.

Text properties and layout

Default Font

Text with non-latin glyphs

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