Matplotlib is hardwired to use the figure box as the wrapping width. To get around this, you have to override the _get_wrap_line_width method, which returns how long the line can be in screen pixels. For example:
text = ('Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, '
'sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. ')
txt = ax.text(.2, .8, text, ha='left', va='top', wrap=True,
bbox=dict(boxstyle='square', fc='w', ec='r'))
txt._get_wrap_line_width = lambda : 600. # wrap to 600 screen pixels
The lambda function is just an easy way to create a function/method without having to write a named one using def.
Obviously using a private method comes with risks, such as it being removed in future versions. And I haven't tested how well this works with rotations. If you want to make something more sophisticated, such as using data coordinates, you would have to subclass the Text class, and override the _get_wrap_line_width method explicitly.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.text as mtext
class WrapText(mtext.Text):
def __init__(self,
x=0, y=0, text='',
width=0,
**kwargs):
mtext.Text.__init__(self,
x=x, y=y, text=text,
wrap=True,
**kwargs)
self.width = width # in screen pixels. You could do scaling first
def _get_wrap_line_width(self):
return self.width
fig = plt.figure(1, clear=True)
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
text = ('Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, '
'sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. ')
# Create artist object. Note clip_on is True by default
# The axes doesn't have this method, so the object is created separately
# and added afterwards.
wtxt = WrapText(.8, .4, text, width=500, va='top', clip_on=False,
bbox=dict(boxstyle='square', fc='w', ec='b'))
# Add artist to the axes
ax.add_artist(wtxt)
plt.show()
