[Matplotlib-users] How to obscure underlying text?

[Andrew B. Y. <and...@sr...>]

How can one partially overlay text on top of text so as to obscure
the underlying text?

I want to print a beginning date at (0,0) and the current date
at (0.1,0) such that the current date's bounding box masks the
underlying beginning date.  What currently happens is the two dates
blend together to form a mess.  (I am creating an mpeg4 where the
current date marches from beginning to end.)

I have tried two things: set a bounding box, set a background color.

  rectangle = matplotlib.patches.Rectangle( (0,0), 0, 0 )
  rectangle.set_fill( True )

  # Drawing beginning date
  s = "%s UTC" % beginning.strftime( "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M" )
  t = matplotlib.text.Text( 0.0, 0.0, s )
  t.set_bbox( rectprops = rectangle.__dict__ )
  t.set_backgroundcolor( color='r' )
  axes.add_artist( t )

  # Draw current date
  txt = "%s UTC" % now.strftime( "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M" )
  t = matplotlib.text.Text( x, 0.0, s )
  t.set_bbox( rectprops = rectangle.__dict__ )
  t.set_backgroundcolor( color='r' )
  axes.add_artist( t )

The set_background color seems to do nothing.
The set_bbox raises the following--
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/matplotlib/artist.py", line 
193, in update
    raise AttributeError('Unknown property %s'%k)
AttributeError: Unknown property _facecolor

Thanks,
Andrew
Python 2.4, __version__  = '0.85', __revision__ = '$Revision: 1.83 $'