Putting text on a path

“Ordinary” straight-line artistic text is far from ordinary—but you can extend its creative possibilities even further by flowing it along a curved path.

PagePlus artpath Putting text on a path

The resulting object has all the properties of artistic text, plus its path is a Bézier curve that you can edit with the Pointer Tool as easily as any other line! In addition, text on a path is editable in some unique ways, as described below.

 To apply a preset curved path to text:

  1. Create an artistic text object.

  2. With the text selected, on the Text context toolbar, click the PagePlus tbr contexttext pathtext Putting text on a path Path Text flyout and choose a preset path.

The text now flows along the specified path, e.g. for “Path – Top Circle”.

PagePlus pathtext4 Putting text on a path 

To add artistic text along an existing line or shape:

  1. Create a freehand, straight, or curved line (see Drawing and editing lines) or a shape (see Drawing and editing shapes).

  2. Choose the PagePlus tbr tools artistictext Putting text on a path Artistic Text Tool from the PagePlus tbr tools artistictextflyout Putting text on a path Artistic Text flyout on the Tools toolbar.

  3. Bring the cursor very close to the line. When the cursor changes to include a curve, click the mouse where you want the text to begin. The line changes to a dashed line.

PagePlus pathtext1 Putting text on a path 

  1. Begin typing at the insertion point. Text flows along the line, which has been converted to a path.

  2. The original line object no longer exists. To recover it, use Undo at this point.

To fit existing text to an existing line or shape:

  1. Create an artistic text object.

  2. Create a freehand, straight, or curved line or a shape.

  3. Select both objects. On the Tools menu, choose Fit Text to Curve. The text now flows along the specified path.

To create text and path at the same time:

  1. Choose one of the Path Text tools from the PagePlus tbr tools artistictextflyout Putting text on a path Artistic Text flyout on the Tools toolbar:

    PagePlus tbr tools freehandpathtext Putting text on a path 

    The Freehand Path Text Tool lets you sketch a curved line in a freeform way.

    PagePlus tbr tools straightpathtext Putting text on a path 

    The Straight Path Text Tool is for drawing a straight line.

    PagePlus tbr tools curvedpathtext Putting text on a path 

    The Curved Path Text Tool lets you join a series of line segments (which may be curved or straight) using “connect the dots” mouse clicks.

  1. These three tools work almost exactly like the Pencil, Straight Line, and Pen tools on the Line flyout, respectively. To use the first two, simply drag to define a line on the page. The Curved Path Text Tool is a bit more complex (and lets you use the Curve Creation context toolbar to define individual segments). See Drawing and editing lines for details.

  1. Create a line on the page. Your line appears as a path with an insertion point at its starting end (for a curved path you’ll need to press Esc or double-click to get the insertion point).

  1. Begin typing at the insertion point. Text flows along the path.

Editing text on a path

Artistic text on a path remains editable as text. Likewise, you can continue to edit its path with the Pointer Tool and Curve context toolbar, as described in Drawing and editing lines.

When a path text object is selected, you’ll notice that text paths have several unique “handles” not found on other objects. You may need to zoom in a bit, but it’s easy to select the handles—special cursors let you know when you’re directly over them. To see what the handles do, carefully compare these two examples:

PagePlus pathtext2 Putting text on a path

A – Baseline Shift Handle, B – Start/End Handles

  • The Baseline Shift handle, indicated by a PagePlus pathbase Putting text on a path cursor, resembles a QuickShape handle with a tiny slider control. Drag the slider to raise and lower the text with re
    spect to the path. In the right-hand example above, we’ve lowered the original text.

  • The Start and End handles, indicated by PagePlus pathstart Putting text on a path and PagePlus pathend Putting text on a path cursors, look like arrows on the text path. Drag them to adjust where the text begins and ends with respect to the path’s start and end nodes.

You can flip text from one side of a path to the other by reversing curves. This switches the start and end nodes of the path, so the text runs in the other direction. It’s handy, for example, if you want to move text from the outside to the inside of a circular path, to run counter-clockwise rather than clockwise, or vice versa. Note that the text isn’t mirrored—it still reads correctly!

PagePlus reverse%20the%20text%20path Putting text on a path 

To reverse the text path:

  • Select the path text object and click the PagePlus tbr contextcurve reversecurves Putting text on a path Reverse Curves button on the Curve context toolbar.

Whichever method you used to create a path text object, you can always detach the text as a separate artistic text object by removing its path.

To remove the text path:

  1. Select the path text object.

  2. Click PagePlus tbr contexttext pathnone Putting text on a path Path – None on the Text context toolbar’s Path flyout.
    – or -
    Choose     Remove Path from Text from the Tools menu.

The text remains as a straight-line artistic text object and the path is permanently removed.

Putting text on a path