Text to a curve .... ?

[jens g.r. benthien]

... with the solution.

John,

I had a few minutes this morning - see the attached pic and the file in the next post.

It's simple:

draw a circle. clone it, move it up 20 units.
type your text. aling both objects to the center of your page. pull a guide vertical guide line to the center of your page. move the text up so that is will be between the two upper archs / curves. click mould, add a basic envelope (the rectangle icon).
click the node editing tool (F4). move your cursor to the center of the top horizontal envelope line, click and move it straight up - follow the guideline. unfortunately there is no snap available in this function. repeat the step with the bottom line of the envelope. now move / shift your text until it's in the middle of the curves. clone it. move it down. remove the mould/envelope, select all chars, type the new word. apply another envelope. grab the center of the bottom envelope line and pull it down. repeat it with the top line of the envelope. adjust the position. group the set. squeeze it by pulling the top handle down. or twist it any way you can think of.

well, sounds complicated because writing each step takes much longer than the actual clicks ;-}

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

----------//--
If you don't know how to dream you'll never be a designer.
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[jens g.r. benthien]

the xar file

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

----------//--
If you don't know how to dream you'll never be a designer.
----------//--

[tonylondon]

John,
isn't it strange! Just when you feel you have catered for all possible mould shapes, along comes another.!I wasn't able to download the xara file - my filter gets in the way. However if you follow my tutorial example called making waves, but instead of moving the handles in steps 3 and 4 in opposite directions you move them both upwards until they reside vertically above the points an amount equal to half the distance between the points, and do the same for the bottom two points (steps 5 and 6) you'll get your shape. Then continue as in applying the wave shape.
I think you were almost there anyway. If you had stretched your flattened shape back into the original mould envelope it would probably have worked out OK.
In the example below I put a blank space at either end.
I've also had a go at converting the text to a brush and unchecking rotate with curve, but the results weren't spectacular,
Tony

[jclements]

Jens, Su, and Tony, I appreciate the above advise/suggestions.

Here is my graphical interpretation of Jen's posting plus a few other suggestions. Jens, I hope this what you were describing.

**************

Gary P, something for Tips 'N Tricks?

Once a mold is applied to an object, you can do Ctrl+G (group) to the mold and then apply another mold over the top of the previous mold. You can continue to repeat the process and then, if you want, you can reverse everything by ungrouping and removing the mold and cycle back to the original shape.

If "Convert to Editable Shapes" were used after a mold were applied another mold could be applied; HOWEVER, there is no way to cycle back to the original shape.

[This message was edited by John Clements on April 08, 2002 at 08:41.]