On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, Landon Blake wrote: Yes you can combine the two shapes into one via the "Union" operation. Check out some of the other boolean operations (Subtract, Exclude, etc.) too. Yes, the border is called the object's "stroke". Go to Fill & Stroke settings and play with the stroke settings. You can change the color, width, even make it a partially transparent gradient. :-) Yes, use the gradient editor. Go to the fill & stroke settings and look for the 'edit' button under to the gradient dropdown. Note that if you need several different gradients you'll want to use the Add button to add new ones. Yes, to do this click on the text two times. The first time you'll see the translational/scaling arrows, the second time you'll see the rotation/skew arrows. Sure, also be sure to check out the tutorial we wrote; it gives some advice for the above plus a lot more. Have fun! Bryce