centered text on curve - center point

[stygg2003]

I am new to Xara as of today. I am trying to have text centered on a point on a curve. My problem is that when I click on the curve to start typing the text, the red line does not show up under my mouse pointer. Rather, it shows up somewhere else seemingly random along the curve -- and from trial-and-error I cannot figure out what determines where the red line shows up. What can I do to determine (and see) where the text willl be centered.

Also, when I type text on a curve, the object size grows substantially -- well beyond the visible boundaries of the object. Is this an inescapable product of putting text on a curve? Thanks. -- Igor

Have a look at these two docs Igor (Doc 1, Doc 2) and see if they help, it's what I found when entering text on a curve.
Stygg2003

[Igor]

stygg2003 -- Yes, those do look familiar, though I am not getting the red dots. (Maybe there is a "view" switch that is turned off?) What I was/am hoping to do is enter text that is centered on a curve. Then, if I change the font size, the typeface, and/or the kerning, the text will stay centered.

What is especially strange to me is that when I tried getting the text along the curve of a closed circle, each time I repeated the attempt with a new circle, the start point for the text changed. I tried to discern if it had something to do with the way that I created the circle -- which way I pulled the cursor after the first click. My sense is that there are some sort of "attachment points" involved ... In any event, this is frustrating -- and not encouraging the first time out of the box (so to speak). Thanks. -- Igor

[jamesmc]

You can make a shape editable such as a sphere, by going to the Arrange>Convert to Editable Shapes menu.

An elipse can then be broken down into four arcs or in this example below and in the attached xar file two shapes (top and bottom.) This allows you to know exactly where your text is going to fall.

I made the lines on the sphere with no fill at 12 points, so it's easier to view. It's easy to regroup everything once you finished placing your text. One advantage of breaking a shape is you can place text in different areas. This is important if that shape becomes more complex later on.

[amoore]

Ok, this is weird. On the first 6 or 8 curved lines on which I typed text just now, the text cursor always appeared halfway between the point I clicked and the end point of the line. Same thing happened yesterday.

Then I opened a new file and drew a much more complex line that looped back on itself. When I clicked the line, both the text cursor and the first red dot appeared at the point I clicked.

Since then, I've been unable to get the text cursor to appear anywhere except where I click on a line. Even closed and reopened Xtreme several times.

I've long suspected that Xara may be self-correcting. Several times, when I've been trying to sort out a bug, behavior that I've replicated over & over has suddenly disappeared, not to return.

BTW, the extended bounding box problem occurs when you draw a shape (rectangle, ellipse or quickshape), convert to editable shape, then type on it. With a rectangle, the bounding boxes look right when the text is on the left side. The right side and the top are bad, and it gets worse when the text goes around a corner. When the text is on the bottom, it's not as bad as on the right and top.

More observations:

- The two red dots don't appear when typing on shapes, so you can't reposition the text except by adding spaces or changing the justification.

- If you flip a rectangle or quickshape horizontally or vertically, the text types on the outside of the shape instead of the inside. The opposite is true for ellipses.

- If you flip the shape horizontally immediately after converting, you can type on the right without the bounding box problem. If you flip it and do something else before typing, the problem occurs.

BTW, Xara X behaves the same way.

[Egg Bramhill]

Placing text on a line/shape can be very unpredictable. I believe a lot of the confusion is caused by the Text Justification.

In most cases if the Justification is set to 'Left' things will happen much as you'd expect, but if you have text set to 'Centre', 'Right' of 'Justified' then you get a lot of these apparent odd behaviours.

[amoore]

In most cases if the Justification is set to 'Left' things will happen much as you'd expect, but if you have text set to 'Centre', 'Right' of 'Justified' then you get a lot of these apparent odd behaviours.

Egg, you're correct that the justification I was using in the initial line tests was Center, and changing it to Left resolved the question about the cursor position. However, on the shape tests, the justification in all the cases I cited was Left.