Christian wrote once into c.l.t.:
BLT can create (semi-transparent) bitmaps of text in arbitrary directions
Try the following:
package require BLT ::blt::bitmap compose myNewBitmap "this is a text" \ -font "Ariel 10 bold" \ -rotate 90 \ -justify left $myCanvas create bitmap 50 50 -bitmap myNewBitmap \ -foreground blue \ -anchor nw \ ...
This works nicely.
RS: Shouldn't the font rather be called Arial (or Helvetica, for even more platform-independence)?