Text on a Path – Control Options

Re: Text on a Path – Control Options

Andrew Peterson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:43:04 -500

Nick, Thanks very much. Exactly what I need. Maybe if it hadn’t been the middle of the night I’d’ve found this – it really isn’t hidden. Appreciate the help. Andy

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Re: Text on a Path – Control Options

Nick — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:32:40 -500

There are controls for what you describe in the text inspector (see the menu Window > Text). The path bias allows you to control where on the path the text starts and the baseline control determines the offset from the path to the text baseline.

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Re: Text on a Path – Control Options

Andrew Peterson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:04:05 -500

When you say you’re setting the arc, are you doing something with the circle, i.e. snipping it, or are you using it as a guide to draw arc segments?

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Re: Text on a Path – Control Options

KeynoteKen — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:59:23 -500

What I’ve been doing is drawing circles, then setting the arc to the area I want the text to start, and then binding it.

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Text on a Path – Control Options

Andrew Peterson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:38:56 -500

It seems when you bind text to a path that your options are limited. After half an hour or so of experimentation I don’t see how you control such things as text alignment (for instance if I bind the text to a half-circle shape, the text shows up at the lower-left corner of the half-circle … what if you want to have it show up in the middle, or on the lower-right corner instead?)

As an old FreeHand user I guess I’m spoiled. FreeHand gave you tremendous control about how text and the shape to which it was bound interacted with each other. You could change the alignment of the text … text had a little round control handle that let you drag it around a circle like a set of cars on a rollercoaster – tremendously powerful and convenient. You could choose whether the text attached to the shape by the ascenders or descenders, you could specify (as I recall) a pixel value that controlled the amount by which the text rode above or around the shape.

I guess what I’m wondering at this point is can you control how text is positioned on a circle once it is bound to it. I even tried positioning the cursor at the beginning of the text and hitting the spacebar a bunch of times, but after a few taps on the spacebar the text started separating from the shape, which I didn’t want, and the individual letters began to rotate, which I also didn’t want. All I would like is text bound to a circle with (for my purposes at the moment) center justification. How do you do that?

Sorry for the long post and thanks for your help.

Andy

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