TEXT ON CURVED PATHS
It has been explained already what kind of curved text can be created with MG, and the different modifications that are allowed. Now it is time to explain how to do all that in practice and using the tools provided.
To put some curved text on a drawing the first thing to do is the same as with normal, straight text: to write what is wanted on the text field provided for it.
Then the "text-button" must be clicked and with the mouse cursor over the screen, click and dragg. Doing that, as usually, will let appear a red line. So, up to this moment, everything is exactly de same as with "normal" text.
The first big difference begins now: when writing curved text the place where the "old_support_line" and the size, shape or angle of this last, have no influence of any kind on the final result. It is suggested to put the text in some place, visible but not disturbing, so as to be able to read what has been written and that it has been done in the right way. Otherwise, it can be modified at any moment in the standard way using the "correct" button.
Once this first step finished it must be chosen the font to be used, so, usually, the postscript window must be opened and the font selected. (In the actual situation, the standard computer-modern fonts have not been implemented for curved text, although there is no special difficulty in doing it. Contact me if it is wanted).. The usual scaling and/or slanting of text using the big slider has no meaning in this situation.
Once the font chosen and with the support line selected -red- the button at right with the title "Tx.Pth" must be clicked. On the small window below, the word "False" will change to "True". It is recommended to unselect the support-line and click once more the same button to change the display to "False" once more.
Having finished the text preparation, now the curve to be used must be created. All curved objects can be used, althought they must be understood first. For example, the bezier circle begin in the right extrem and goes in a clockwise way. The oval begin at left and continue to the right, also in clockwise sense. It is much more convenient, usually, to use this last than the former, but it must not been forgotten that any object can be rotated to place the origin where it is desired.
The bezier curve is the most convenient as anything can be done. It begin where the first click has been made and goes in a natural sense, point by point.
Some precissions must be made. It is absolutly necessary to prepare the text BEFORE creating the curve OR, if the curve already exist on the screen when the text is placed, after the preparation of the text, the curve must be grouped, alone, and ungouped immediatly. Doing that, the curve will be the last object in the internal list of MG, and this is needed to place the text over it.
Now it is time to select the curve and to click once more the "Tx.Pth" button to be able to see the word "True" in the small screen. The steps done up to now, constitute the standard routine to create curved text. Always the same, to be used to it doesn't take more than a couple of days; afterwards, it is done almost "mechanically".
To finish the process, the button at right with the title "TxPar" must be clicked. Immediatly a small window with some radio-buttons will appear. There are tooltips for all those buttons. The first two serve to choose the horizontal and vertical scale for the glyphs. The third permits slanting. With the fourth the curve or path, can be also scaled, althought its usefulnes is not very clear. The fifth radio-button permits to place the text more or less close to the curve in a "vertical" sense. With the next , it is possible to choose the separation from the beginning of the curve. The seventh is quite important as it serves to set up the separation between the glyphs. The other two buttons are only for the curve itself: if nothing is done, the curve will not appear in the final drawing. If it is wanted to let it shown, the last button must be used after writing the thickness of the line in the small text field. The other button only serves to change the color of the curved line.
When al details have been finished, it is IMPERATIVE to click once more the button "TxPar". Having done that, the curved text is ready to be seen trough ghostview, so the "small-ghost" button can be clicked to launch it.
Althought it would be nothing to be done with the window launched by clicking "TxPar", it is imperative to click this button at least twice, the first time to launch the window and the second to hide it.
Usually, when the text shown in ghostview is looked in detail, there must be done some adjustment of size and/or position of the glyphs or the curve. This is done in the simplest way. The curve can be modified at will at any moment without the need to click any button and the same is true for the type of font of the text. It can be changed as many times as wanted, and launching ghostview the different aspects controlled.
To finish with this item I must emphasize the need to practice a little bit as the reward is worthwhile.