Vosje Posted November 17, 2022 Share Posted November 17, 2022 Hello, I have a question about the way Publisher's callout text tool works. It's really great that you can adjust it the way you like, but then, when I use frame text tool on it to actually fill it with text, it doesn't quite work the way I expect it to. I want to center my text both horizontally and vertically inside the oval shape, but that doesn't happen... I'm not sure why, maybe I'm missing something? The insets are set to 0. It would be really great if somebody could help me out with this! Thanks in advance. EDIT: I have a feeling as if the vertical position of the text doesn't only depend on the height of the oval shape where the text should actually go, but also on the total height of the speech bubble, including the pointy triangle... I hope there is a workaround because it's very good that this callout tool is so flexible and you can adjust it, but it's very inconvenient that the text isn't centered inside the oval! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted November 17, 2022 Share Posted November 17, 2022 (edited) When you try and use a Callout Ellipse Shape, or any other shape, as a Text Frame you need to remember that the Centre Vertical functionality tries to centre the text within the vertical size of the whole shape, not just one part of it (in this case, the ellipse), as you have surmised. The shape isn’t ‘aware’ of what it looks like, or what it might be used for, it’s just a shape. If the shape is more complex than something like a rectangle or ellipse then you will probably need to do some manual centring to get it looking right. One other option is to ‘cheat’ by grouping an Ellipse and Triangle, adding an Outline Effect to the group, and then putting a Frame Text layer inside the Ellipse – see attached video and document. Note that this will be rasterised upon export because of the use of an Effect, and one of the shapes will need to be filled. 2022-11-17 09-40-20.mp4 callout.afpub Edited November 17, 2022 by GarryP Added document. Vosje 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vosje Posted November 17, 2022 Author Share Posted November 17, 2022 Hi @GarryP, thanks for your reply! This is really a bummer because this actually makes this callout shape pretty useless... I mean, this workaround is rather complex and if you have a lot of those callouts like in a comic book, you also completely loose the flexibility of the callout shape. Of course it should have been possible for the program to calculate the height of the oval only (since this callout shape is adjustable, for the program these two elemets are "loose" already)... But Affinity didn't add this functionality, I'm actually not sure if this is a missing feature or kind of a bug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted November 17, 2022 Share Posted November 17, 2022 The Callout Ellipse Shape is simply a shape which looks like a ‘speech bubble’, it’s not meant to be a ‘fully-functional’ speech bubble, probably because the Affinity applications haven’t been designed specifically to make publications which need speech bubbles. This sort of thing has already been requested, e.g.: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/151923-smarter-speech-bubble/ Please feel free to ‘add your voice’ to that thread if you want to but I think any change to this situation might be a long time coming, if it happens at all, considering all of the feature requests that exist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vosje Posted November 17, 2022 Author Share Posted November 17, 2022 Thanks for the link! That's a pity, I guess you're right and it's low priority. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tudor Posted November 17, 2022 Share Posted November 17, 2022 Another workaround is to simply group a callout shape with an ellipse containing the text. Vosje 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vosje Posted November 17, 2022 Author Share Posted November 17, 2022 Thanks @tudor! How did you align the ellipse with the text so well inside the callout tool's oval shape? Just using your own vision and feeling that it's centered? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tudor Posted November 17, 2022 Share Posted November 17, 2022 Yes, I just drew the ellipse on top and adjusted its size to match the callout. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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