Box around text in matplotlib

Question

how is possible to make a box around text in matplotlib? I have text on three different lines and in three different colors:

 ax.text(2,1, \'alpha\', color=         


        

Answer 1

There is some documentation online somewhere (the best I can find quickly is http://matplotlib.org/users/annotations_guide.html) for using VPacker and an AnnotationBbox to put together several texts of varying font properties.

from matplotlib.offsetbox import TextArea, VPacker, AnnotationBbox
from pylab import *
fig = figure(1)
ax = gca()
texts = ['alpha','beta','epsilon']
colors = ['red','cyan','black']
Texts = []
for t,c in zip(texts,colors):
    Texts.append(TextArea(t,textprops=dict(color=c)))
texts_vbox = VPacker(children=Texts,pad=0,sep=0)
ann = AnnotationBbox(texts_vbox,(.02,.5),xycoords=ax.transAxes,
                            box_alignment=(0,.5),bboxprops = 
                            dict(facecolor='wheat',boxstyle='round',color='black'))
ann.set_figure(fig)
fig.artists.append(ann)

I'm not sure why both of the last two lines are needed. I would think the second to last would suffice.