text

text(positions; text, kwargs...)
text(x, y; text, kwargs...)
text(x, y, z; text, kwargs...)

Marker space pixel

By default, text is drawn with markerspace = :pixel, which means that the text size is interpreted in pixel space. (The space of the text position is determined by the space attribute instead.)

The boundingbox of text with markerspace = :pixel will include every data point or every text anchor point but not the text itself, because its extent depends on the current projection of the axis it is in. This also means that autolimits! might cut off your text, because the glyphs don't have a meaningful size in data coordinates (the size is independent of zoom level), and you have to take some care to manually place the text or set data limits such that it is fully visible.

You can either plot one string with one position, or a vector of strings with a vector of positions.

using CairoMakie


f = Figure()

Axis(f[1, 1], aspect = DataAspect(), backgroundcolor = :gray50)

scatter!(Point2f(0, 0))
text!(0, 0, text = "center", align = (:center, :center))

circlepoints = [(cos(a), sin(a)) for a in LinRange(0, 2pi, 16)[1:end-1]]
scatter!(circlepoints)
text!(
    circlepoints,
    text = "this is point " .* string.(1:15),
    rotation = LinRange(0, 2pi, 16)[1:end-1],
    align = (:right, :baseline),
    color = cgrad(:Spectral)[LinRange(0, 1, 15)]
)

f

Marker space data

For text whose dimensions are meaningful in data space, set markerspace = :data. This means that the boundingbox of the text in data coordinates will include every glyph.

using CairoMakie


f = Figure()
LScene(f[1, 1])

text!(
    [Point3f(0, 0, i/2) for i in 1:7],
    text = fill("Makie", 7),
    rotation = [i / 7 * 1.5pi for i in 1:7],
    color = [cgrad(:viridis)[x] for x in LinRange(0, 1, 7)],
    align = (:left, :baseline),
    fontsize = 1,
    markerspace = :data
)

f

Alignment

Text can be aligned with the horizontal alignments :left, :center, :right and the vertical alignments :bottom, :baseline, :center, :top.

using CairoMakie


aligns = [(h, v) for v in [:bottom, :baseline, :center, :top]
                 for h in [:left, :center, :right]]
x = repeat(1:3, 4)
y = repeat(1:4, inner = 3)
scatter(x, y)
text!(x, y, text = string.(aligns), align = aligns)
current_figure()

Justification

By default, justification of multiline text follows alignment. Text that is left aligned is also left justified. You can override this with the justification attribute.

using CairoMakie


scene = Scene(camera = campixel!, size = (800, 800))

points = [Point(x, y) .* 200 for x in 1:3 for y in 1:3]
scatter!(scene, points, marker = :circle, markersize = 10px)

symbols = (:left, :center, :right)

for ((justification, halign), point) in zip(Iterators.product(symbols, symbols), points)

    t = text!(scene,
        point,
        text = "a\nshort\nparagraph",
        color = (:black, 0.5),
        align = (halign, :center),
        justification = justification)

    bb = boundingbox(t, :pixel)
    wireframe!(scene, bb, color = (:red, 0.2))
end

for (p, al) in zip(points[3:3:end], (:left, :center, :right))
    text!(scene, p .+ (0, 80), text = "align :" * string(al),
        align = (:center, :baseline))
end

for (p, al) in zip(points[7:9], (:left, :center, :right))
    text!(scene, p .+ (80, 0), text = "justification\n:" * string(al),
        align = (:center, :top), rotation = pi/2)
end

scene

Offset

The offset attribute can be used to shift text away from its position. This is especially useful with space = :pixel, for example to place text together with barplots. You can specify the end of the barplots in data coordinates, and then offset the text a little bit to the left.

using CairoMakie


f = Figure()

horsepower = [52, 78, 80, 112, 140]
cars = ["Kia", "Mini", "Honda", "Mercedes", "Ferrari"]

ax = Axis(f[1, 1], xlabel = "horse power")
tightlimits!(ax, Left())
hideydecorations!(ax)

barplot!(horsepower, direction = :x)
text!(Point.(horsepower, 1:5), text = cars, align = (:right, :center),
    offset = (-20, 0), color = :white)

f

Relative space

The default setting of text is space = :data, which means the final position depends on the axis limits and scaling. However, it can be useful to place text relative to the axis itself, independent of scaling. With space = :relative, the position (0, 0) refers to the lower left corner and (1, 1) the upper right of the Scene that a plot object is in (for an Axis that is equivalent to the plotting area, which is implemented using a Scene).

A common scenario is to place labels within axes:

using CairoMakie

f = Figure()

ax1 = Axis(f[1, 1], limits = (1, 2, 3, 4))
ax2 = Axis(f[1, 2], width = 300, limits = (5, 6, 7, 8))
ax3 = Axis(f[2, 1:2], limits = (9, 10, 11, 12))

for (ax, label) in zip([ax1, ax2, ax3], ["A", "B", "C"])
    text!(
        ax, 0, 1,
        text = label,
        font = :bold,
        align = (:left, :top),
        offset = (4, -2),
        space = :relative,
        fontsize = 24
    )
end

f

MathTeX

Makie can render LaTeX strings from the LaTeXStrings.jl package using MathTeXEngine.jl.

using CairoMakie


lines(0.5..20, x -> sin(x) / sqrt(x), color = :black)
text!(7, 0.38, text = L"\frac{\sin(x)}{\sqrt{x}}", color = :black)
current_figure()

You can also pass L-strings to many objects that use text, for example as labels in the legend.

using CairoMakie


f = Figure()
ax = Axis(f[1, 1])

lines!(0..10, x -> sin(3x) / (cos(x) + 2),
    label = L"\frac{\sin(3x)}{\cos(x) + 2}")
lines!(0..10, x -> sin(x^2) / (cos(sqrt(x)) + 2),
    label = L"\frac{\sin(x^2)}{\cos(\sqrt{x}) + 2}")

Legend(f[1, 2], ax)

f

Rich text

With rich text, you can conveniently plot text whose parts have different colors or fonts, and you can position sections as subscripts and superscripts. You can create such rich text objects using the functions rich, superscript and subscript, all of which create RichText objects.

Each of these functions takes a variable number of arguments, each of which can be a String or RichText. Each can also take keyword arguments such as color or font, to set these attributes for the given part. The top-level settings for font, color, etc. are taken from the text attributes as usual.

using CairoMakie

f = Figure(fontsize = 30)
Label(
    f[1, 1],
    rich(
        "H", subscript("2"), "O is the formula for ",
        rich("water", color = :cornflowerblue, font = :italic)
    )
)

str = "A BEAUTIFUL RAINBOW"
rainbow = cgrad(:rainbow, length(str), categorical = true)
fontsizes = 30 .+ 10 .* sin.(range(0, 3pi, length = length(str)))

rainbow_chars = map(enumerate(str)) do (i, c)
    rich("$c", color = rainbow[i], fontsize = fontsizes[i])
end

Label(f[2, 1], rich(rainbow_chars...), font = :bold)

f

Tweaking offsets

Sometimes, when using regular and italic fonts next to each other, the gaps between glyphs are too narrow or too wide. You can use the offset value for rich text to shift glyphs by an amount proportional to the fontsize.

using CairoMakie

f = Figure(fontsize = 30)
Label(
    f[1, 1],
    rich(
        "ITALIC",
        superscript("Regular without x offset", font = :regular),
        font = :italic
    )
)

Label(
    f[2, 1],
    rich(
        "ITALIC",
        superscript("Regular with x offset", font = :regular, offset = (0.15, 0)),
        font = :italic
    )
)

f