Image and text skewing / distorting megathread

**rsrsrs** · 01 March 2018, 08:34 AM

Originally Posted by handrawn

consequence of the change..pita

in the select tool there are 'flip horizontally' and 'flip vertically' buttons on the infobar [they look like blue and white darts]

thats what i did, but strange, now it works .... i dont get it ...
anyway thx for your kind help ...

**handrawn** · 01 March 2018, 08:42 AM

these things happen....

the behaviour using the handles has changed though, and not for the better...

**ss-kalm** · 03 March 2018, 06:43 PM

Has anything been done to fix this issue yet?

I'm trying to work through one of Gary P's OLD XARA XONE tutorials (January 2007 - Happy New Year - because it looks interesting), and the instructions say:

"Switch to the Selector Tool (F2 or click on the arrow pointer icon). Click the black padlock icon on the Infobar (shown above top) to disable Lock Aspect Ratio. In the Height % text entry box, enter 150 and press Enter".

At the moment I don't see any way to do this in V15 ... am I missing something, or is it NOW impossible to create this effect from a 10 year old tutorial? Or are there some hoops I have to jump through to get it done.

This image alone should be an indication of why we NEED to be able to squash/stretch text at will.

I can't see any easy way to do it with the aspect ratio tool as that seems to ONLY work horizontally.

Click image for larger version.

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I know I'm not the most talented user of Xara by a very long way, but I've been using it since Corel Xara 1, and have got reasonably used to the way it works. and I "NOW" CANNOT figure out how to easily stretch text to 150% height DELIBERATELY, which should be a really easy operation.

**RKissane** · 06 March 2018, 03:14 PM

Keith,

I have no problem stretching text. But I applied this change that Handrawn published a register change that will correct this some issues for text. Check out post 36.

https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ing-font/page4

Ray

**ss-kalm** · 06 March 2018, 04:13 PM

Thanks. That helped a lot before applying that, there was no way to stretch text vertically. Apparently, it was locked to prevent people stretching text accidentally ... which as a side effect also prevents people stretching text ON PURPOSE!

**handrawn** · 06 March 2018, 06:20 PM

@Ray - I wanted to check the post you gave, but link seems broken

@Keith - Xara seems to be losing it's way....

**RKissane** · 06 March 2018, 06:27 PM

Here is the link again.

https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ing-font/page4

I tested it works not sure what happen to other one.

Ray

**handrawn** · 06 March 2018, 06:29 PM

thanks - just wanted to make sure nothing had changed from my point of view

**Faithtoken** · 06 March 2018, 06:50 PM

Originally Posted by rsrsrs

One more,
if i make a Clipview of a bitmap and i Flip it, it only Flips the shape, NOT the Bitmap ?!?!?!?
A Group does not help, any idea?
Or is it also one of this new pita-features?

I cant flip anything in any of my files now. Only the shape flips, not the fill. Is there a short-command I have enabled?
I have tried restarting the software and tried flipping images in several files, but no luck. I have not been using clipview.
It worked just 1 hour ago.

- Fixed it myself, appearantly you can't flip the fill of an object if the "aspect ratio" is disabled.

Want to say that I miss the way I could squash images, for making simple reflections for instance, also the ability to cut an image by shrinking and pressing - (minus).

Also, is there a way to disable the "your language is not available, want too use english instead?"-message that appear every time you start the software?

**ss-kalm** · 06 March 2018, 08:34 PM

Yes, I noticed that the link was broken, but I managed to find the relevant item anyway (I remembered reading it earlier, but it wasn't relevant, as I hadn't "upgraded" at that point) ...

Thanks for the link anyway Ray, and thank you too Steve.

I think that the main focus seem to be making sure that the web designers don't screw up powerful software. However, the need to be able to squash and stretch (anything) in any direction AT WILL ON PURPOSE is an overriding required ability. If you do it accidentally then fix it.

One thing I would like to see though is when you edit the text the status line should show the current stretch/squash percentages (vertical and horizontal), so that it can be reset to 100% at will. at the moment if you stretch it to 126% and then try and edit again later it starts at 100% again, it SHOULD start at the 126% it was originally stretched to.

EDIT ...

IGNORE that, it can be fixed via the ADVANCED Toolbar, as that DOES show the stretch/squash percentage of the font size.