With the
label object you can display text in a box, linked by a line to a specified
point. In the accompanying diagram, a sphere representing the Earth (whose
center is at earth.pos) has an associated label
carrying the text "Earth" in a box, connected to the sphere by a line which
stops at the surface of the sphere:
A unique feature of the label object is that several attributes are given in terms of screen pixels instead of the usual "world-space" coordinates. For example, the height of the text is given in pixels, with the result that the text remains readable even when the sphere object is moved far away. Other pixel-oriented attributes include xoffset, yoffset, and border. Here are the label attributes:
pos; x,y,z The point in world space being labeled
xoffset, yoffset The x and y components of the line, in pixels (see diagram)
text The text to be displayed,
such as 'Earth'
(Line breaks can be included as \n, as in label.text =
"Three\nlines\nof text")
height Height of the font in pixels
color, red, green, blue Color of the text
opacity Opacity of the
background of the box, default 0.66
(0 transparent, 1 opaque, for objects
behind the box)
border Distance in pixels from the text to the surrounding box
box 1 if the box should be drawn (default), else 0
line 1 if the line from the box to pos should be drawn (default), else 0
linecolor Color of the line and box
space World-space radius of a sphere surrounding pos, into which the connecting line does not go. This space is added to the line.
font Optional name of the font, such as `helvetica'