How to center text along a path with svgwrite

Question

I have a path I've created in svgwrite and I want to have my text to be centered along that path.

It's confusing since the svgwrite API doesn't appear to offer any mechanism for doing so

Answer 1

This leverages two passthrough parameters of the TextPath

You need to set two parameters on the TextPath constructor:

1. text_anchor="middle" to say that the text should be centered over the anchor point
2. startOffset="50%" to use the halfway mark of the path as the text's anchor point. (Without this, it'll look like your text is still left-aligned and that the first half of it has been chopped off)

Sample code:

# setup canvas
dwg = svgwrite.Drawing()
dwg.viewbox(0,0,200,100)

# Create some path. This bit really matter
x1 = 20
y1 = 50
r1 = 50
arc = math.sqrt(2*(r1**2))
path = dwg.path(
        d=f"m {x1},{y1} " + # starting point
          f"a{r1},{r1} 0 0 1 {arc},0 " + # first arc
          f"a{r1},{r1} 0 0 0 {arc},0 ", # second arc
        stroke="#DDD",
        fill="none")

# Center your text along path
text = svgwrite.text.Text("") # The text path must go inside a text object. Parameter used here gets ignored
text.add(svgwrite.text.TextPath(path, text="soy sol sonatora", startOffset="50%", method="align", text_anchor="middle"))

# Draw path and text
dwg.add(path)
dwg.add(text)

Which creates