(AFPhoto, Mac desktop) "Stretch" or "squish" a text block?

[Mike Swartzbeck]

I know this ought to be simple; searches in the Help section turn up instructions for how to make my text wrap to fill a shape, and how to warp/distort my text to fill a shape, but nothing on how I can grab a text block and "stretch" the text vertically, horizontally or proportionally.

When I grab a corner of a text block and stretch, the text just re-wraps to fill the new space instead of "stretching out".

What I'm basically trying to do is just "condense" or "extend" the type, which is something I can do in the Character palette also, but I know there has to be a way I can just grab a "handle" on the text block and "squish" or "stretch" it.

Kind of embarassed asking this; I'm sure there's some simple control/option-key combo for that — kind of like what Illustrator and Photoshop have — which I just haven't discovered yet.

Thanks in advance,

[GarryP]

It sounds like you might need to use Artistic Text rather than Frame Text but I can’t really tell from the description.
Would you be able to show us what you have so we will get a better idea of what you want?

[Mike Swartzbeck]

Yeah; I think I just answered my own question here by fiddling a bit just now.

I guess my other question, now, is whether or not there's a way I can reshape the frame and have the text re-wrap within it and hold its shape when I'm working in Artistic Text. Looks like more fiddling is in order.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, Mike Swartzbeck said:

I guess my other question, now, is whether or not there's a way I can reshape the frame and have the text re-wrap within it and hold its shape when I'm working in Artistic Text.

If I understand your question correctly, Artistic Text has no frame (the selection box is not a text frame) so there is no way to reshape it.  To control wrapping you would need to use (for instance) returns or line breaks & maybe align or justification options.