Stair step type on paths with AD or APub?

[IndigoMoon]

Hi,

is this effect available in one of the Affinity apps or at least an "easy" workaround?

Thanks!

[GarryP]

Could you give a visual example of what you mean please?
(A link to a web resource with a description of the part of the image you want may be all that is needed to give us an idea of what you want.)

[IndigoMoon]

The characters following a path, but the alignment is always vertical to the ground, like this...

[GarryP]

Hmm. I’ve never tried that with the Affinity software.
I’ll have a think about it (need to apply some OS updates) but someone else might be able to come up with a good solution before I do (if there is one).

[GarryP]

Here’s one way using a stepped curve, the Text On Curve functionality, and a massive character tracking setting. (Original curve has been kept for demonstration purposes.)
There may be others. I know I can do it by converting the text to curves and distributing the individual letters but the text doesn’t remain editable so that’s not a great solution.

stepped-text.afdesign

[IndigoMoon]

Thank you for your efforts! I know that, but unfortunately it doesn't give me the flexibility to change the steepness or direction without to readjust the characters.

Well, in this case Indesign is more comfortable, but in some cases it's still sufficient...

[Old Bruce]

6 hours ago, IndigoMoon said:

the alignment is always vertical to the ground, like this...

Use the Frame Text tool to make the frame, shear the frame x degrees then use the Character Panel to shear the letters -x degrees.

Edit: I am totally wrong about this. Please disregard.

 

[IndigoMoon]

13 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

...then use the Character Panel to shear the letters -x degrees.

Hey Bruce, it would be really a great idea, but it doesn't work that way or do I miss something?

[walt.farrell]

16 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Use the Frame Text tool to make the frame, shear the frame x degrees then use the Character Panel to shear the letters -x degrees.

 

I had to use the Transform panel to shear the frame by, e.g., -25 degrees. And then use the Character panel to shear the letters -25 degrees to get them upright. (I'm using Designer Beta.)
It seems that one uses clockwise as positive shear, and the other uses counter-clockwise as positive shear?

Or what have I misunderstood?

Both at -25:

Frame at -25, text at 0:

Frame at -25, text at 25:

 

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Or what have I misunderstood?

How does this create the stair-stepped effect?

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

How does this create the stair-stepped effect?

I'm not sure it does.

I was more focused on the discrepancy between Old Bruce's directions and what I see when I try to follow them

 

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm not sure it does.

I was more focused on the discrepancy between Old Bruce's directions and what I see when I try to follow them

From what I can tell, @Old Bruce's directions do not create the stair-step effect either.

[Old Bruce]

You folks are correct, I didn't have enough coffee and misread the post. Sorry for wasting everyone's time.

[Pšenda]

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

How does this create the stair-stepped effect?

It would need to make in addition to the shear of the font set the rotation of individual characters.

But this might not be a big task for developers :-)

[GarryP]

It might not even be as difficult as that.

Aligning the characters to the curve currently involves a process (this is a probably a very-over-simplified guess) of:
* determining the position of each character along the curve;
* converting that position into a 2D coordinate;
* rotating the character so its vertical is at a tangent to the curve.
To get stepped text on a curve all(?) that is needed is to ignore the last step and keep the letters vertical.

This could be facilitated with a checkbox in the Positioning section of the Character Panel (which is only enabled if the text is on a curve). E.g. “No rotate on curve”, or something similar.

[IndigoMoon]

Btw Adobe does have a few type effects...

[v_kyr]

Well in SVG one could do this via a x/y-coordinate placement for the amount of character in a text (aka the texts character length). There for example ...

Quote

...
<text
     x="50 70 90 110 130 150 170 190 210 230 250"
     y="120 115 110 105 100 95 90 85 80 75 70"
     fill="#fff">HALLO WELT!</text>
...

... would result in the following ...

... which could also be automated in code with a generation function for a given string and initial coordinate x,y placement and positioning extend. - However, Affinity actually doesn't know to handle such SVG code at all here. One would have to use other tools!

[AlanPickup]

Playing around with this one of the problems I came across was the spacing of individual letters and getting them to line up in columns. I went down the power duplicate route with text frames, when I tried linking them spaces an d centering became a problem. If you leave them unlinked and add your letters individually in to each frame it works with power duplicate 

Stepped Letters.afpub

[GarryP]

That works quite nicely with linked frames too if you don’t use spaces and get the settings right (up to a point).
Nice catch Alan. That might be quite useful in certain circumstances.

stepped-linked-frames.afpub

Edited December 15, 2019 by GarryP
Added AFPUB file.

[AlanPickup]

thnx Garry, should have said linking the text flow on the frames, so you could continually type, did not work, rather than grouping the frames.