Text Along A Curve has changed under Updates 26 and 27
Wyvern
🖼️ 226 images Mapmaker
After installing Update 26, I needed to add some fresh text along a curve to a map I've been working on, and found the dialogue box to do so had changed, primarily with the addition of three new checkboxes.
If you set up your text along a curve as previously however, the default settings in these new checkboxes mean your text will now be INVERTED on the map. I spent an irritating ten minutes experimenting, trying to work out why, and managed finally to reset the checkboxes so the tool worked as it did previously.
Then Update 27 was issued; installed that and the dratted checkboxes are back to what they were, so I've had to do it all again!!!
There's no help or explanation for how to get the new system to work as previously, so to maybe assist others, what you must do is uncheck the "Align Text Upright" box (yes, this didn't make any sense to me either, but doing so is the ONLY way to unlock the other two new checkboxes, and they MUST be unlocked first to get the tool to function as before). All Align Text Upright seems to do is INVERT the text, not PLACE IT UPRIGHT at all - Inverse Logic, certainly!!!
Once you've unlocked the other two checkboxes, "Use Other Side of Curve" and "Reverse Curve Direction", deselect both, and Text Along a Curve will then function exactly as it always previously has. Far from clear what the point of either of these options is, other than to make the text !desrever (= reversed!).
It would have helped if the little graphics that show where your text will be placed in relation to the curve changed with the different checkbox options, in the absence of any other help regarding this tool adjustment. Beyond that, I'd hope Update 28 will at least have the default settings amended to actually make sense again. Please...
Comments
Goodness! I don't think that was intended Wyvern.
Please can you make Tech Support aware of these crossed wires?
I am not sure what is going on here. I have not used the text along curve in 26 yet and have not downloaded 27. What does happen in 26 with me is that the text is reversed. Instead of it going from right to left, it goes left to right. This seems to be that the second spot of the curve is the starting location rather than the first spot.
The reverse direction does nothing for me unless I also invert the text.
@Wyvern It's on the bug list now.
Thanks very much @Loopysue ! Haven't checked back here since I posted due to other things getting in the way this evening. Hadn't realised I'd done a "Ralf" (i.e. found a new bug while simply trying to map)!
@JulianDracos - If you follow my instructions above for now, that should be enough to get Text Along A Curve to function properly again, until whatever's happened in the Update can be fixed formally, whether you're using Update 26 or 27 currently.
Actually, it was Remy who reported it ;)
Oh, fine! Thanks @Monsen then! 😎
A couple of new features were added to ATTC in 3.96. For the most part, you have described the behaviors, correctly, but some of them wren't well described ("Align Text Upright") and some have annoying defaults (the interaction between Align Text Upright and the other new flags),
"Align Text Upright". This feature places text along the curve, and the direction otf the curve should always be chosen to place the text start in an upright fashion. When Upright text is selected, features that would result in not-upright text (e.g. use "Other side of Curve" and "Reverse Curve Direction" will be disabled.
"Use Other Side Of Curve" draws text on the opposite size (and opposite sngle) of the expected direction for the crurve.
"Reverse Curve Direction" indicates that the direction curve for placing text shuld be reversed. Fir the curve was draw let to right, this flag will treat the curve as drawing right to left.
If you would like the legacy behavior, turn off the three new special placement flags: "Align Text Upright", "Use Other Side of Curve" and "Reverse Curve Direction".
These settings are stored in the XML file, it it's possible that there be unexpectedly changes during an update.
I do agree that a full preview of the text and baseline would be a useful feature. However, it requires a complete rewrite of that dialog, which was a bit out of scope for the "Add Upright Flag" task. It's on the wishlist if I get a say or so to work on it, though.
Here's a quick sheet that shows what the results of the new flags do. Note that the two "Align Text Upright" lines appear to have the same direction, even though the lines go in opposite direction and would normally appear in opposite directions.
Thanks for the explanation @jslayton , though I must confess this seems to have made the changes still more opaque to me, as aside from creating reversed lettering (which I'd guess will be of very minimal use), I'm not really following what's going on. For instance, the two lines in your graphic marked "Align Text Upright" appear wholly identical whether the line is drawn left to right or right to left.
Maybe it might have been more helpful to have used actual curves, and shown how the text is meant to appear correctly using the new options? I assume that some combination will let you write text so as to be normally legible on the concave or convex side of a curve facing in a specific direction, possibly depending on which direction the curve has been drawn. I'm still unclear what that/those combination(s) might be, however.
The way that ATTC's Align Text Upright is that it flips the text so that it's more upright at the starting point of the curve. Normally, the text precisely aligns the text baseline to the angle of the curve (or line) that text is following. The text will be upright only if the curve is draw generally left-to-right. If the curve is draw right-to-left, the text will be upside down. The "Align Text Upright" flag examines the curve and automatically flips the text upside down and right-to-left to alight the text for easier reading. So, in short, a line draw left-to-right an a similar line drawn right-to-left should appear pretty much the same when they both have then "Align Text Upright" flag: that is the purpose of the flag! Using a complex curve for the text might ended up even more have confusing than simple lines because text would be aligning only to parts of the curve rather than the whole curve. The intent was to get text on a slightly curved line such as a river or country name.
OK, thanks for that.
Will this potentially then create alignment issues for text on strongly-curving arcs? Such as a circle, semi-circle or narrow-end of an ellipse? Or indeed one that curves in different directions (like a long name on a river line, say)?
Just as a final note, I did have to use Text On A Curve on just such a doubly (if gently) curving line having followed my own instructions as given in my first posting in this topic, and it worked fine, just as it always has done previously (and as it has in pre-Update 26 times on the stronger arcs I've noted in this post).
So does the silence mean nobody knows ("Will this potentially then create alignment issues for text on strongly-curving arcs? Such as a circle, semi-circle or narrow-end of an ellipse? Or indeed one that curves in different directions (like a long name on a river line, say)?", or is experimentation still underway? Or have I simply misinterpreted what had been said earlier?
Either way, can we PLEASE get the default setting for Text Along A Curve presented so one can actually write text along a curve without worrying that the text will end up inverted, reversed, confused, and probably feeling seasick? The fact the default reverts back to chaos every time I reopen the program is getting REALLY tedious, as I've been using the command a lot lately.
If I need text reversing (can't imagine why, as noted already, but...) or inverting, I can worry about what commands need adjusting on such an occasion. If I have a curved line I want the text to be written along so it can be read the same way up as the rest of the map, I shouldn't have to be worrying about altering the default settings just to achieve that basic operation.
I'm looking into this now, sorry that I missed this earlier.