plt: Plot Text

Calling Sequence

...

plt(text, x, y[, <keylist>])

Description

Plot text (a string) at the point (x, y). The exact relationship between the point (x, y) and the text is determined by the justify keyword. text may contain newline ("\n") characters to output multiple lines of text with a single call.

The coordinates (x, y) are NDC coordinates (outside of any coordinate system) unless the tosys keyword is present and non-zero, in which case the text will be placed in the current coordinate system. However, the character height is never affected by the scale of the coordinate system to which the text belongs.

Note that the pledit command (see ``pledit: Change Plotting Properties'' on page ) takes dx and/ or dy keywords to adjust the position of existing text elements.

Keyword Arguments

The following keyword argument(s) apply only to this function. tosys = 0/ 1 Establish the interpretation of (x, y). If tosys= 0 (the default), use Normalized Device Coordinates; if nonzero, use the current coordinate system.

font = <font value> 
height = <float value> 
opaque = 0/ 1 
path = 0/ 1 
orient = <integer value> 
justify = (see text description)

Select text properties. The font can be any of the strings "courier", "times", "helvetica" (the default), "symbol", or "schoolbook". Append B for boldface and "I" for italic, so "courierB" is boldface Courier, "timesI" is Times italic, and "helveticaBI" is bold italic (oblique) Helvetica. Your X server should have the Adobe fonts (available free from the MIT X distribution tapes) for all these fonts, preferably at both 75 and 100 dpi. Occasionally, a PostScript printer will not be equipped for some fonts; often New Century Schoolbook is missing. The font keyword may also be an integer: 0 is Courier, 4 is Times, 8 is Helvetica, 12 is Symbol, 16 is New Century Schoolbook, and you add 1 to get boldface and/ or 2 to get italic (or oblique).

The height is the font size in points; 14.0 is the default. X windows only has 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, and 24 point fonts, so don't stray from these sizes if you want what you see on the screen to be a reasonably close match to what will be printed. By default, opaque= 0 and text is transparent. Set opaque= 1 to white-out a box before drawing the text.

The default path (path= 0) is left-to-right text; set path= 1 for top-to-bottom text. The default text justification, justify="NN" is normal in both the horizontal and vertical directions. Other possibilities are "L", "C", or "R" for the first character, meaning left, center, and right horizontal justification, and "T", "C", "H", "A", or "B" for the second character, meaning top, capline, half, baseline, and bottom vertical justification. The normal justification "NN" is equivalent to "LA" if path= 0, and to "CT" if path= 1. Common values are "LA", "CA", and "RA" for garden variety left, center, and right justified text, with the y coordinate at the baseline of the last line in the string presented to plt. The characters labeling the right axis of a plot are "RH", so that the y value of the text will match the y value of the corresponding tick. Similarly, the characters labeling the bottom axis of a plot are "CT". The justification may also be a number, horizontal+ vertical, where horizontal is 0 for "N", 1 for "L", 2 for "C", or 3 for "R", and vertical is 0 for "N", 4 for "T", 8 for "C", 12 for "H", 16 for "A", or 20 for "B".

The integer value orient (default 0) specifies one of four angles that the text makes with the horizontal (0 is horizontal, 1 is ninety degrees, 2 is 180 degrees, and 3 is 270 degrees).