Flipping/mirroring a path without affecting the text on it

[Juhani]

In Designer I have some text on a curvy path and would like to mirror the path underneath the text while keeping the text itself unflipped and readable. However, when I flip the path the text characters flips along with it. I tried copying and pasting the path first, flip it and then paste text on it, but the text comes on top of it still flipped. I also tried Reversing the path direction, which just puts the text to the other side of the path and starts the line on another end of the path, but does not upflip the characters. "Reversing Text Path" does the same thing. Even when I Expand the stroke, break it apart again and take a single stroke out of it, the TEXT IS STILL FLIPPED. What is going on here and how to get around that without having to manually redraw the path so that the text is not flipped? How can I force Designer to forget that I ever flipped the path?

[walt.farrell]

I think you would need to duplicate the original path, before adding the text. Then flip it and reverse the curve (if needed). Then Reset Bounding Box. Then add the text.

[Juhani]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

I think you would need to duplicate the original path, before adding the text. Then flip it and reverse the curve (if needed).

That's exactly what (i said) i did. It doesn't work. How do you "reset bounding box"?

[Juhani]

Think I might have found an answer to my question from another thread, so sharing a brilliant hack by @GarryP also here. Still feels like a bug if this is the best Designer can do.

On 5/10/2020 at 11:13 AM, GarryP said:

You can ‘bake’ the curve into its current geometry by:
* drawing a rectangle around it;
* selecting both the curve and rectangle together;
* choosing menu “Layer → Geometry → Merge Curves”;
* choosing menu “Layer → Geometry → Separate Curves”;
* deleting the rectangle.
See my attached video (for multiple curves just draw the rectangle around them all).
It’s not a particularly quick method, but how often would you need to do this?

[Dan C]

Thanks for letting us know you've found a workaround that suits your requirements here!

3 minutes ago, Juhani said:

Still feels like a bug if this is the best Designer can do

I can verify this was initially logged as a bug with our team, where it was confirmed by our devs as expected behaviour - a 'flipped' curve will also flip any Text applied to that path.

However, there is an improvement logged for letting the user decide the text direction, regardless of curve direction. I'll be sure to 'bump' this for you now to add your vote

[lepr]

Instead of flipping the path, flip the nodes of the path.