pyplot tab character

Question

I want to use the tab character in pyplot. However, the tab character is displaying a square, not the tab space I want.

My code is as follows:

fig = pl.figure()
fig.text(.1,.05, "test \t test", bbox=dict(facecolor='red', alpha=0.5))
 

Can anyone tell me how to make it work?

Answer 1

I see that pylab.show actually shows some spaces in place of your square. But savefig gives what you describe. So you need to decide how many spaces you want a tab to take in your text, i.e.:

fig = pylab.figure()
text = "test \t test".replace("\t", "    ")
fig.text(.1,.05, text, bbox=dict(facecolor='red', alpha=0.5))
Or, maybe you want to simply expand your tabs using "standard" conventions:

text = "test \t test".expandtabs()

This might help you!