Thanks for checking this. Unfortunately, introducing \hbox didn't work; the text is still off-center with respect to the vertical line: https://i.ibb.co/hYGfdgZ/text-align.png For comparison, the SVG file loaded into Inkscape appears similar to: https://i.ibb.co/KF3PBkw/inkscape-alignment.png Note how the text is vertically centered above the vertical line. To me, it looks like the text, after a rotational transform, is being written to the baseline rather than (cap height + descender height) / 2, which seems to be a MetaPost conversion issue? There's another, possibly related issue, which I'll provide in a separate thread. Here's the code: % SOF \pushoverloadmode \unprotect \permanent\tolerant\protected\def\includesvgfile[#1]#*[#2]% {\hbox\bgroup % no \dontleavehmode \getdummyparameters[\c!offset=\zeropoint,#2]% \clf_includesvgfile{#1}\dimexpr\dummyparameter\c!offset\relax \egroup} \permanent\tolerant\protected\def\includesvgbuffer[#1]#*[#2]% {\hbox\bgroup % no \dontleavehmode \getdummyparameters[\c!offset=\zeropoint,#2]% \clf_includesvgbuffer{#1}\dimexpr\dummyparameter\c!offset\relax \egroup} \protect \popoverloadmode \startbuffer[svg] <svg width="25mm" height="70mm" viewBox="0 0 25 70" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="m 12.500001,63.971412 v -12.4787" id="path2" style="fill:none;fill-opacity:1;stroke:#000000;stroke-opacity:1" /> <text x="-48.831322" y="15.60547" id="text4933-8-6" transform="rotate(-90)" style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:12px;font-family:Roboto;-inkscape-font-specification:'Roboto, Normal';font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal"><tspan id="tspan159594-1" x="-48.831322" y="15.60547" style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:12px;font-family:Roboto;-inkscape-font-specification:'Roboto, Normal';font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal">16p13.3</tspan></text> </svg> \stopbuffer \starttext \placefigure[]{}{\includesvgbuffer[svg][conversion=mp]} \stoptext % EOF