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I'm trying to fit some text into a spiral shape. There's going to be a good deal of text, so doing each individual letter separately will be too tedious. Is there a solution, such as "fit text to curve" that will make this work more easily? I've tried doing just that, but the option is greyed out, so unavailable. I like being able to use the relatively new spiral tool but now I need to fit text to it. Any solutions?
Use the convert to shape option on the spiral, this makes it a line, you can then fit text to curve. I couldn't get a very accurate fit but it might help.
The option 'Fit Text to Curve' is probably grayed out because you first have to convert the spiral shape by selecting 'Convert to Edible Shapes' in the Arrange Menu.
Works well enough, Christine, but it seems a bit hit-and-miss regarding placement on the spiral shape.
I would choose Illustrator for this as my weapon of choice, as it is very easy to place text and do it on the fly to produce what you want without any hassle. This was done in version CS6 (2012) so this is not exactly new technology.
No idea why the text is missing the curve.
Perhaps rather than Convert to Shape, you could simply Ungroup.
It works for me.
Acorn
yes ungroup seems to work ok.
Good to know.
So the question is, should a Smart Spiral not be able to handle embedded text without making it dumb?
Acorn
I think it could have been just a glitch on my PC as it works now with either ungroup or convert to shape. would be nice to have on the adjustable spiral though.
Don't know if this is any help.
Stygg
Many thanks to all, I converted the spiral to an editable shape and the text flowed perfectly, I didn't have a problem with it not following the line properly. The only glitch is that I was originally thinking of having the text begin at the outer spiral end rather than at the center, it fit better in the overall piece, but this is something I can work around easily and it isn't going to be a problem for what I have to do. In the end, I don't want the spiral line, just the text, but it was simple to remove the line and the text stayed where it was supposed to be. I haven't done the complete text yet, I'm still composing, but it looks like I have a solution that I can work with. As always, the folks at TalkGraphics are GREAT!!
You could try reversing the line - with the line selected use the line tool and the reverse button is on the InfoBar.
Also try selecting the text and use the Left/Right/Centre/Justify options.Quote:
Originally Posted by charliescoffee
Easiest way I found is to use the smart handles to change the shape and ungroup to get a line; you have lots of line choices then, brush strokes, freehand line changes, text to left, centre or right justified.
Gary
If you need an alternative way of creating a spiral (linear or exponential) Dmitry Malutin's SPX Spiral Generator is still available to download from the Xara Xone archive page: http://site.xaraxone.com/html/shareware.html
Attachment 124648
I don't think you can drag an drop directly into XDP anymore but you can easily drag and drop to the Windows desktop then drag the eps file into Xara.
I got it to work using the spiral Johopen's suggested. I don't know if it would work using the Xara spiral, perhaps I just did something wrong when I tried it, but it's too late now to worry about what I might have done wrong, I got the text to spiral, I got rid of the lines, and it's doing (almost) what I wanted. My original plan was to have the text spiral from the outside in and this solution works from the inside out, but I've got a spiral and I'm not going to complain at this point about this relatively minor hitch. I can rework the overall item so the text works this way and I'm happy. Many thanks to all and especially to Johopen and Christine for your help. P.S. I'll play with reversing the text tomorrow, if that works, great, but if it doesn't, at least I've got the spiral. I've always been able to depend on TalkGraphics!!!