Another consequence of not knowing a text string’s length
in advance is that it is difficult to construct a string with varying
text attributes, such as this sentence, which switches among
italic, normal, and bold text.
If you had only the <text>
element, you’d need to experiment to find where each differently styled
segment of text ended in order to space them properly. To solve this
problem, SVG provides the <tspan>
, or text span element. Analogous
to the XHTML <span>
element,
<tspan>
is a tabula rasa that may be embedded in text content, and upon which you
may impose style changes. The <tspan>
remembers the text position, so
you don’t have to. Thus,