Text on a curve workaround tip

probstette · September 2009

The Text on a Curve command only writes clockwise on an arc, because an arc is drawn as part of a circle with only some shown. (You can add an arc and then move one of the nodes to demonstrate this.) If you right-click Explode and choose Line To Path, then you'll be left with a curved path of the same shape (or close enough) and you can put text along it. You can then flip it if you want your writing to go the other way.

This is useful for writing in titles, and the ribbons under crests, where you want to be sure your arc has bilateral symmetry.

jaerdaph · September 2009

Text on a Curve also won't place letters on the inner concave surface of an arc if you want the letters to curve downwards like a "U". The letters come out upside down on any "U" arc you draw because the letters get placed on the outer convex surface of the arc (i.e., the letters are always curved upwards). To get around this, I draw a three-point smooth path left to right with a grid on. I draw the first point, select a second, lower point, and then I draw the third point at the same height as the first point. It looks like a "V" when you are drawing it but the end result when you are done is a "U"-shaped curve. I then use Text on a Curve on this smooth path guide. I've attached a sample to demonstrate. I actually prefer using smooth paths for Text Along A Curve because they come out a little nicer, and let you do things like place curved text along a winding river. You sometimes have to do some experimenting with text size to make sure all the letters will fit nicely along your curve or smooth poly - note the letter crowding on the smooth path in the example.

jaerdaph · September 2009

Here's a better example where I've placed the three points of the smooth line equidistantly for arc-like symmetry and selected an appropriate text size so the letters aren't crowded together on the line. This time I had the command place the text placed on top of the line.

sdavies2720 · September 2009

You can also coarse-tune the letter spacing by putting an extra space or two between letters that are being crowded

Barrataria · September 2009

Thanks for these! I gave up on this feature a while back because I did not always want the inverted-arc alignment for the text...

jaerdaph · September 2009

Here's an example from one of my maps where I used smooth paths that followed along rivers and roads in place of a curve with the Text On A Curve command to get text labels that follow the shape of the entity they are naming.

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Text on a curve workaround tip

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