Mismatch between view in notebook and Inkscape

[olek-osikowicz]

Hi,

This simple code, produces image in notebook as expected:

But when I open that in Inkscape there is a big mismatch nad text is not hanging any more.

Drawsvg: v2.1.1 Python: 3.11

Any idea how to fix that?

[cduck]

Thanks for reporting this issue with how text is displayed. Unfortunately, the dominant-baseline attribute might be poorly supported by Inkscape (related bug, discussion). Drawsvg is generating the requested SVG but Inkscape is rendering it incorrectly. Interestingly, I see also this when I view it in Firefox (with the Mac Firefox default font_family='Helvetica'):

More evidence that the dominant-baseline is not well supported while selecting the text in Inkscape:

---

I've found the most reliable and portable way to align text in an SVG is by specifying the font with font-family (so different viewers don't pick different default fonts) and manually offsetting the y-position. Avoid using dominant-baseline or other advanced attributes. For example:

dw.Text('HELLO', 25, 100, 100+(25*0.8), font_family='Arial', ...)

where 0.8 depends on your font. Either measure this or use some font inspection tool to determine the appropriate value.

[olek-osikowicz]

Thank you for your reply,

If that's the case maybe it should be mentioned in the 'Quick Reference' that use of dominant-baseline is not well supported and discouraged.

I'll create PR to change the docs.

[cduck]

Please do. Your issue really exemplified this.