QTextLayout

PyQt5.QtGui.QTextLayout

Description

The QTextLayout class is used to lay out and render text.

It offers many features expected from a modern text layout engine, including Unicode compliant rendering, line breaking and handling of cursor positioning. It can also produce and render device independent layout, something that is important for WYSIWYG applications.

The class has a rather low level API and unless you intend to implement your own text rendering for some specialized widget, you probably won’t need to use it directly.

QTextLayout can be used with both plain and rich text.

QTextLayout can be used to create a sequence of QTextLine instances with given widths and can position them independently on the screen. Once the layout is done, these lines can be drawn on a paint device.

The text to be laid out can be provided in the constructor or set with setText().

The layout can be seen as a sequence of QTextLine objects; use createLine() to create a QTextLine instance, and lineAt() or lineForTextPosition() to retrieve created lines.

Here is a code snippet that demonstrates the layout phase:

# int leading = fontMetrics.leading();
# qreal height = 0;
# textLayout.setCacheEnabled(true);
# textLayout.beginLayout();
# while (1) {
#     QTextLine line = textLayout.createLine();
#     if (!line.isValid())
#         break;

#     line.setLineWidth(lineWidth);
#     height += leading;
#     line.setPosition(QPointF(0, height));
#     height += line.height();
# }
# textLayout.endLayout();

The text can then be rendered by calling the layout’s draw() function:

# QPainter painter(this);
# textLayout.draw(&painter, QPoint(0, 0));

For a given position in the text you can find a valid cursor position with isValidCursorPosition(), nextCursorPosition(), and previousCursorPosition().

The QTextLayout itself can be positioned with setPosition(); it has a boundingRect(), and a minimumWidth() and a maximumWidth().

See also

QStaticText.

Classes

FormatRange

Enums

CursorMode

Member	Value	Description
SkipCharacters	TODO	TODO
SkipWords	TODO	TODO

Methods

__init__()

Constructs an empty text layout.

See also

setText().

---

__init__(str)

Constructs a text layout to lay out the given text.

---

__init__(QTextBlock)

Constructs a text layout to lay out the given block.

---

__init__(str, QFont, paintDevice: QPaintDevice = None)

Constructs a text layout to lay out the given text with the specified font.

All the metric and layout calculations will be done in terms of the paint device, paintdevice. If paintdevice is 0 the calculations will be done in screen metrics.

---

additionalFormats() → List[FormatRange]

See also

setAdditionalFormats().

---

beginLayout()

Begins the layout process.

Warning: This will invalidate the layout, so all existing QTextLine objects that refer to the previous contents should now be discarded.

See also

endLayout().

---

boundingRect() → QRectF

The smallest rectangle that contains all the lines in the layout.

---

cacheEnabled() → bool

Returns true if the complete layout information is cached; otherwise returns false.

See also

setCacheEnabled().

---

clearAdditionalFormats()

TODO

---

clearFormats()

TODO

---

clearLayout()

Clears the line information in the layout. After having called this function, lineCount() returns 0.

Warning: This will invalidate the layout, so all existing QTextLine objects that refer to the previous contents should now be discarded.

---

createLine() → QTextLine

Returns a new text line to be laid out if there is text to be inserted into the layout; otherwise returns an invalid text line.

The text layout creates a new line object that starts after the last line in the layout, or at the beginning if the layout is empty. The layout maintains an internal cursor, and each line is filled with text from the cursor position onwards when the setLineWidth() function is called.

Once setLineWidth() is called, a new line can be created and filled with text. Repeating this process will lay out the whole block of text contained in the QTextLayout. If there is no text left to be inserted into the layout, the QTextLine returned will not be valid (isValid() will return false).

---

cursorMoveStyle() → CursorMoveStyle

The cursor movement style of this QTextLayout. The default is LogicalMoveStyle.

See also

setCursorMoveStyle().

---

draw(QPainter, Union[QPointF, QPoint], selections: Iterable[FormatRange] = [], clip: QRectF = QRectF())

Draws the whole layout on the painter p at the position specified by pos. The rendered layout includes the given selections and is clipped within the rectangle specified by clip.

---

drawCursor(QPainter, Union[QPointF, QPoint], int)

TODO

---

drawCursor(QPainter, Union[QPointF, QPoint], int, int)

TODO

---

endLayout()

Ends the layout process.

See also

beginLayout().

---

font() → QFont

Returns the current font that is used for the layout, or a default font if none is set.

See also

setFont().

---

formats() → List[FormatRange]

TODO

---

glyphRuns(from: int = -1, length: int = -1) → List[QGlyphRun]

TODO

---

isValidCursorPosition(int) → bool

/ Returns true if position pos is a valid cursor position.

In a Unicode context some positions in the text are not valid cursor positions, because the position is inside a Unicode surrogate or a grapheme cluster.

A grapheme cluster is a sequence of two or more Unicode characters that form one indivisible entity on the screen. For example the latin character `Ä’ can be represented in Unicode by two characters, `A’ (0x41), and the combining diaresis (0x308). A text cursor can only validly be positioned before or after these two characters, never between them since that wouldn’t make sense. In indic languages every syllable forms a grapheme cluster.

---

leftCursorPosition(int) → int

Returns the cursor position to the left of oldPos, next to it. It’s dependent on the visual position of characters, after bi-directional reordering.

See also

rightCursorPosition(), previousCursorPosition().

---

lineAt(int) → QTextLine

Returns the i-th line of text in this text layout.

See also

lineCount(), lineForTextPosition().

---

lineCount() → int

Returns the number of lines in this text layout.

See also

lineAt().

---

lineForTextPosition(int) → QTextLine

Returns the line that contains the cursor position specified by pos.

See also

isValidCursorPosition(), lineAt().

---

maximumWidth() → float

The maximum width the layout could expand to; this is essentially the width of the entire text.

Warning: This function only returns a valid value after the layout has been done.

See also

minimumWidth().

---

minimumWidth() → float

The minimum width the layout needs. This is the width of the layout’s smallest non-breakable substring.

Warning: This function only returns a valid value after the layout has been done.

See also

maximumWidth().

---

nextCursorPosition(int, mode: CursorMode = SkipCharacters) → int

Returns the next valid cursor position after oldPos that respects the given cursor mode. Returns value of oldPos, if oldPos is not a valid cursor position.

See also

isValidCursorPosition(), previousCursorPosition().

---

position() → QPointF

The global position of the layout. This is independent of the bounding rectangle and of the layout process.

See also

setPosition().

---

preeditAreaPosition() → int

Returns the position of the area in the text layout that will be processed before editing occurs.

See also

preeditAreaText().

---

preeditAreaText() → str

Returns the text that is inserted in the layout before editing occurs.

See also

preeditAreaPosition().

---

previousCursorPosition(int, mode: CursorMode = SkipCharacters) → int

Returns the first valid cursor position before oldPos that respects the given cursor mode. Returns value of oldPos, if oldPos is not a valid cursor position.

See also

isValidCursorPosition(), nextCursorPosition().

---

rightCursorPosition(int) → int

Returns the cursor position to the right of oldPos, next to it. It’s dependent on the visual position of characters, after bi-directional reordering.

See also

leftCursorPosition(), nextCursorPosition().

---

setAdditionalFormats(Iterable[FormatRange])

See also

additionalFormats().

---

setCacheEnabled(bool)

Enables caching of the complete layout information if enable is true; otherwise disables layout caching. Usually QTextLayout throws most of the layouting information away after a call to endLayout() to reduce memory consumption. If you however want to draw the laid out text directly afterwards enabling caching might speed up drawing significantly.

See also

cacheEnabled().

---

setCursorMoveStyle(CursorMoveStyle)

Sets the visual cursor movement style to the given style. If the QTextLayout is backed by a document, you can ignore this and use the option in QTextDocument, this option is for widgets like QLineEdit or custom widgets without a QTextDocument. Default value is LogicalMoveStyle.

See also

cursorMoveStyle().

---

setFont(QFont)

Sets the layout’s font to the given font. The layout is invalidated and must be laid out again.

See also

font().

---

setFormats(Iterable[FormatRange])

TODO

---

setPosition(Union[QPointF, QPoint])

Moves the text layout to point p.

See also

position().

---

setPreeditArea(int, str)

Sets the position and text of the area in the layout that is processed before editing occurs. The layout is invalidated and must be laid out again.

See also

preeditAreaPosition(), preeditAreaText().

---

setText(str)

Sets the layout’s text to the given string. The layout is invalidated and must be laid out again.

Notice that when using this QTextLayout as part of a QTextDocument this method will have no effect.

See also

text().

---

setTextOption(QTextOption)

Sets the text option structure that controls the layout process to the given option.

See also

textOption().

---

text() → str

Returns the layout’s text.

See also

setText().

---

textOption() → QTextOption

Returns the current text option used to control the layout process.

See also

setTextOption().