Vertical alignment on insert_textbox() variance when resaving PDF

[andrem-85]

I've got an interesting problem here, I am using the library to add some text in three specific spots. The user can fill out all or none of them in any order and it saves the PDF. If it save incrementally or otherwise, I get offset alignment if the script is already run and has filled out the text. I am defining the locations with rects, which are not moving, it appears only the way that it inserts the text is off.

I use:
shape.insert_textbox(rects_here, user_inputs_here, fontsize=7, fontname="hebo", align=1)
and i simply offset the rects by an amount for the next textbox

I used shape.draw_rect to show where the text is to be placed.
Filled out two boxes then saved:

Fill one box out, save, then run script again to fill out second box:

Subsequent re-runs of the script fill out the text in the upper position. I've tried non-incremental save, page.clean_contents(), page.new_shape(), but so far I have not been able to figure out what is causing this.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

[andrem-85]

Incase anyone else has this issue, I came up with two work arounds after some fiddling around:

• This type of behavior does not occur with shape.insert_text() for whatever reason. I made a working version of it, however I wanted the text centered in the boxes (hence align=1) and this would require a monospaced font with some extra conditionals if the user inputs one, two or three characters to reposition the points to keep the text centered. That's doable. The biggest problem is the font.
• I created a loop that adds a shape.insert_textbox() with a single character of font size 1 in a very inconspicuous location, overlapping some borders in the margin so the reader can't actually see it. This loops runs before the main loop, followed by saveIncr(), then the main loop runs. Because the PDF has been saved with the work around loop, all all subsequent user inputs are in line in the "off" position, as in my previous post, but they've been adjusted them back to where they're centered.

The second option is not pretty, but it produces the desired result so that's the route I ended up taking.