Contour around multi-line tikz text

Question

I am trying to produce a text inside a node which has a contour. Problem is: when using contour, text width seems to be ignored, so I can not use auto multi-line text.

I discovered contours in tikz halo around text, and I can use it correctly as in:

\draw (0, 0) node {\contour{white}{A very long title that we mean to split on multiple lines}};

but when adding text width it is not multi-lined:

\draw (0, 0) node[text width=5cm] {\contour{white}{A very long title that we mean to split on multiple lines}};

And without contour it works correctly:

\draw (0, 0) node[text width=5cm] {A very long title that we mean to split on multiple lines};

How can I fix this?

Apparently contour puts everything in a box. Just try this, out of TikZ picture. \contour{red}{A very long text that hopefully breaks at the end of the this line otherwise I need to write more stuff}. So I think, the pragmatic approach is to break manually. — percusse, Mar 25 '13 at 13:59
Same problem with shadowtext package. Very annoying. It seems there is no way of getting wrapping contour or shaded multiline text inside a TikZ node. — mmj, Apr 15 '13 at 14:08

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Judging from the output of the pdfrender package, it seems that it does the same as the following TikZ code (which is coded as the opposite of optimal) and as the contour package.

Code

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}
\tikzset{
    text shadow/.code args={[#1]#2at#3(#4)#5}{
        \pgfkeysalso{/tikz/.cd,#1}%
        \foreach \angle in {0,5,...,359}{
                \node[#1,text=white] at ([shift={(\angle:.5pt)}] #4){#5};
        }
    }
}
\begin{document}
    \begin{tikzpicture}
    \fill[gray, step=.5mm] (-1.6,-1) rectangle (1.6,1);
    \node[
        text shadow={[align=center,text width=3cm] at (0,0) {A very long title that we mean to split on multiple lines \ldots}}]
                                      at (0,0) {A very long title that we mean to split on multiple lines \ldots};
    \end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Output

enter image description here

Contour around multi-line tikz text

1 Answers1

Code

Output

Linked