.. _text-guide:

Working with text

.. toctree::

text_props.rst

mathtext.rst

usetex.rst

annotations.rst

matplotlib has excellent text support, including mathematical

expressions, truetype support for raster and vector outputs, newline

separated text with arbitrary rotations, and unicode support. Because

we embed the fonts directly in the output documents, eg for postscript

or PDF, what you see on the screen is what you get in the hardcopy.

`freetype2 <http://freetype.sourceforge.net/index2.html>`_ support

produces very nice, antialiased fonts, that look good even at small

raster sizes. matplotlib includes its own

:mod:`matplotlib.font_manager`, thanks to Paul Barrett, which

implements a cross platform, W3C compliant font finding algorithm.

You have total control over every text property (font size, font

weight, text location and color, etc) with sensible defaults set in

the rc file. And significantly for those interested in mathematical

or scientific figures, matplotlib implements a large number of TeX

math symbols and commands, to support mathematical expressions

anywhere in your figure.

Basic text commands

The following commands are used to create text in the pyplot

interface

* :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.text` - add text at an arbitrary location to the ``Axes``;

:meth:`matplotlib.axes.Axes.text` in the API.

* :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.xlabel` - add an axis label to the x-axis;

:meth:`matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_xlabel` in the API.

* :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.ylabel` - add an axis label to the y-axis;;

:meth:`matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_ylabel` in the API.

* :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.title` - add a title to the ``Axes``;

:meth:`matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_title` in the API.

* :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.figtext` - add text at an arbitrary location to the ``Figure``;

:meth:`matplotlib.figure.Figure.text` in the API.

* :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.suptitle` - add a title to the ``Figure``;

:meth:`matplotlib.figure.Figure.suptitle` in the API.

* :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.annotate` - add an annotation, with

optional arrow, to the ``Axes`` ; :meth:`matplotlib.axes.Axes.annotate`

in the API.

All of these functions create and return a

:func:`matplotlib.text.Text` instance, which can bew configured with a

variety of font and other properties.