On 14-9-2011 21:38, Tavmjong Bah wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-09-14 at 15:16 -0400, john Culleton wrote:
>> Came across a string of text on a book cover where the first letter
>> leans to the left, the last leans to the right, the middle character
>> is upright and all the others have a lean dictated by their
>> location with respect to the left or right end points. What filter
>> should I be looking for?
>
> Convert text to path then:
>
>
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Extensions-ModifyPath.html#E...
>
>
> You could do it with the Displacement filter primitive but unless you
> are a mathematician and a programmer it would not be easy:
>
>
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Filters-Pixel.html#Filters-D...
Or, alternatively:
1. create text object, select it, and press ctrl+C (copy it)
2. create horizontal straight line
3. apply LPE "Pattern along path" to this straight line,
with "width in units of length" set,
and click the "link to path" button next to "pattern source"
(you should now see the text on the path)
4. apply a second LPE "Envelope deformation",
uncheck the "left&right paths"
5. edit the top and bottom bend path, and you're done :)
This preserves editing capability of your text.
It is somewhat of a hack, but it is intended use of the "link to path"
capability of the Pattern along path LPE.
Unfortunately, the wait for LPE's to be available for text turns out to
be very long. So until then, you can use this method.
Ah, I didn't know that the text could be used with "link to path"! That
is quite nice. BTW, it has been proposed that SVG 2 include the ability
to distort text between a bottom and top path. I played a bit with the
envelope distortion to demonstrate what is possible with Inkscape right
now. You can see what I came up with at: