Texts and Tables - Cinderella Documentation
Description: The user's guide to the Interactive Geometry Software Cinderella

Skip to content

# Texts and Tables

With CindyScript you can produce controlled and styled text for a drawing. The essential functionality is covered by the `drawtext` operator. Furthermore, with `drawtable` a table output can be generated. Using texts and tables in scripts is very useful, since one can use the script language to control when and where text is displayed in a construction. This is a very important tool for providing explanatory texts and functional exercises that react to input.

#### Drawing Text: `drawtext(<vec>,<expr>)`

Description: The `drawtext(<vec>,<string>)` operator plots a text `<string>` at a specified position that is given by the position vector `<vec>`. This position vector can be given either in Euclidean xy-coordinates or in homogeneous coordinates.

Example: The line `drawtext(``(0,0),"Hello World")` prints the string "Hello World" with lower left corner at the position (0, 0).

Modifiers: The `drawtext` operator supports several operators for the modification of appearance and position.

Modifier | Parameter | Effect
--- | --- | ---
`size` | `<real>` | sets the text size
`color` | `[<real>,<real>,<real>]` | sets the text color
`alpha` | `<real>` | sets the text opacity
`xoffset` | `<real>` | set an x offset in pixels between text and base point
`yoffset` | `<real>` | set a y offset in pixels between text and base point
`offset` | `[<real>,<real>]` | set an xy offset in pixels between text and base point
`align` | `"left", "right", "mid"` | determines where the text alignment should be
`bold` | `<bool>` | flag for bold text
`italics` | `<bool>` | flag for italics text
`family` | `<string>` | specifying the font family

Besides the available font families also the three strings `serif`, `sansserif` and `monospaced` are allowed, that always produce corresponding standard font types.

Example: The code

    x=1..10;
    forall(x,i,
      drawtext((i,0),"Text",
      size->2*i+15,
      bold->true,
      color->(1-i/10,0,i/10`

    ![](../assets/wiki_up/TextX.png)
    )

produces the picture below.

If the string expression contains a chacracter then this line-break is literally interpreted. By this it is easy to produce multilined text, as the following piece of code shows.

    drawtext`0,0),size->18,
    "In Cinderella 'newlines' in Text
    are really used as line terminators.
    So this text will appear as a
    multilined text.")

#### Available font families: `fontfamilies()`

Description: This operator produces a list of all font families that are available on your computer. Usually this will be quite a lot. The following piece of code displays the names of some of these font families in their own font style.

    families=fontfamilies();
    i=0;
    while(length(families)>i,i=i+1;
       drawtext((mod(i,5)*7,round(i/5)),families_i,family->families_i);
    )

#### Unicode Characters: `unicode(<string>)`

Description: Cinderella can display any Unicode Character in text strings. To access a unicode character the statement `unicode(<string>)` accepts a unicode description (a number) given as a string of digits. It returns a string with the corresponding unicode character. By default the base of the unicode description is 16. So hexadecimal descriptions are usually accepted as input. The base can be changed by a modifier.

The base of the unicode description can be changed with the `base` modifier.

Example: Both `unicode("0041")` and `unicode("65",base->10)` produce the character "A".

#### Test whether a string can be displayed: `candisplay(<string>)`

Description: This operator tests, whether a given string can be displayed in the currently chosen font. It returns a boolean value.

#### Drawing tables: `drawtable(<vec>,<list>)`

One- and two-dimensional lists can be easily drawn in a geometric view as tables. In the simplest form one has only to provide the list and a position where the table should be drawn. Modifiers can be used to fine tune the appearance of the table.

Example: The following code produces the picture below:

    x=1..10;
    table=apply(x,(#,#^2,#^3,#^4`;
    drawtable`0,0),table);

Modifiers: The `drawtable` operator supports several modifiers to control the graphical appearance of the table. A summary of the modifiers is given in the following table:

Modifier | Parameter | Effect
--- | --- | ---
`width` | `<int>` | the width of the cells in pixels
`height` | `<int>` | the width of the cells in pixels
`flip` |  | exchanges the role of rows and columns
`border` | `<bool>` | turns on/off drawing of lines and borders
`size` | `<real>` | sets the text size
`color` | `[<real>,<real>,<real>]` | sets the text color
`alpha` | `<real>` | sets the text opacity
`offset` | `[<real>,<real>]` | sets an xy offset in pixels between text and base point
`align` | `"left", "right", "mid"` | determines the horizontal text alignment within a cell
`back` | `<bool>` | turns on/off the drawing of a table background
`back` | `[<real>,<real>,<real>]` | turns on the drawing of table background and sets it to an RGB color
`backalpha` | `<real>` | sets opacity of the table background

Example: The following code is a more elaborate example using the `drawtable` operator. modifiers are used to create a nice appearance of the tables. A second table is used to create a heading for the table.

    x=1..9;
    tab=apply(x,(#,#^2,#^3,#^4));
    tab1=("x","$x^2$","$x^3$","$x^4$");
    linecolor((0,0,.8`;
    drawtable`0,0),tab,
      width->50,
      height->22,
      back->(1,0,0),
      backalpha->0.1,

    ![](../assets/wiki_up/Table1X.png)
      align->"right",
      size->12
    );
    linecolor((0,0,0`;
    drawtable`0,8.1),tab1,flip->true,
      width->50,
      height->33,
      back->(0,0,1),
      backalpha->0.4,
      align->"mid",
      size->16,
      color->(1,1,1)
    );