Calculate width of text before drawing the text

I know you asked about D3, but this might be a native solution to your issue.

The HTML5 canvas 2D context has some built-in functionality to measure text. You might be able to tap into that to measure text for other APIs like SVG. If it’s not 100% accurate, surely it’s proportional to the correct answer.

var BrowserText = (function () {
    var canvas = document.createElement('canvas'),
        context = canvas.getContext('2d');

    /**
     * Measures the rendered width of arbitrary text given the font size and font face
     * @param {string} text The text to measure
     * @param {number} fontSize The font size in pixels
     * @param {string} fontFace The font face ("Arial", "Helvetica", etc.)
     * @returns {number} The width of the text
     **/
    function getWidth(text, fontSize, fontFace) {
        context.font = fontSize + 'px ' + fontFace;
        return context.measureText(text).width;
    }

    return {
        getWidth: getWidth
    };
})();

// Then call it like this:
console.log(BrowserText.getWidth('hello world', 22, 'Arial')); // 105.166015625
console.log(BrowserText.getWidth('hello world', 22)); // 100.8154296875