Context.textExtents

Gets the extents for a string of text. The extents describe a user-space rectangle that encloses the "inked" portion of the text, (as it would be drawn by cairo.context.Context.showText). Additionally, the x_advance and y_advance values indicate the amount by which the current point would be advanced by cairo.context.Context.showText.

Note that whitespace characters do not directly contribute to the size of the rectangle (extents.width and extents.height). They do contribute indirectly by changing the position of non-whitespace characters. In particular, trailing whitespace characters are likely to not affect the size of the rectangle, though they will affect the x_advance and y_advance values.