Text on path handle

[fredlim]

I have CS5.5 and Affinity Designer. In Illustrator there is a handle to control the position of text on the path, is there something similar in Designer? I use that quite a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCTPASFKaXk&t=160s

 

[firstdefence]

yes the handles are green and red.

You can have two sets of handles, inside and outside.

[fredlim]

Yes I tried that, but I want a middle handle between the red and green.

[PixelPest]

Like so?

 

 

[MEB]

Hi fredlim,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Create the path you want to use as text path (a circle for example), then with the object selected go to menu Layer ▸ Convert to Text Path and start writing the text you want (it will be left aligned at this point), then click the Centre Align button in the context toolbar to centre it between the handles. I believe this is what you want to achieve.

[fredlim]

Yes using Centre Align is the only way currently, for short text less than two quarter is OK. But in my case I design the text for the wrist watch case back, the text is quite long, more than three quarter, then a mid-handle become very useful, as I cannot using quarter snap with left/right handle anymore. Please consider to add the mid-handle in future.

[fredlim]

15 hours ago, PixelPest said:

Like so?

Thank you, that is currently how I did for a few text, for longer text a mid-handle is needed. I am thinking a workaround is drag a guide so I can drag the handles to snap on the guide, but I failed to snap the handle on the guide, any idea?

 

 

[PixelPest]

For longer text it will work as well - even during typing:

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, fredlim said:

I am thinking a workaround is drag a guide so I can drag the handles to snap on the guide, but I failed to snap the handle on the guide, any idea?

From what I can tell, the start & end point triangle markers either don't snap to guides or to other object geometries at all, or don't do so reliably. But even with snapping disabled, they do snap to specific places on the curve, like the 4 shown in the gif @PixelPest posted for a circle or ellipse. Other shapes can have a different number & placement of snapping points, depending on their symmetry (or lack thereof), the number of nodes on the curve, & maybe even which triangle is dragged. I haven't figured out the rules for that, but if you experiment with different types of shapes & open curves you should see what I mean.

Something else that might sometimes be useful to take advantage of is how the modifier keys change how dragging on the triangles work. The status bar at the bottom of the window shows the modifier key options when the pointer is over one of the triangles. For example, dragging with the shift key moves the text instead of the triangle, & with the CMD key (probably the CTRL key on Windows) moves the triangle pairs symmetrically.

[fredlim]

2 hours ago, PixelPest said:

For longer text it will work as well - even during typing:

I see. Thanks a lot!

[fredlim]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

From what I can tell, the start & end point triangle markers either don't snap to guides or to other object geometries at all, or don't do so reliably. But even with snapping disabled, they do snap to specific places on the curve, like the 4 shown in the gif @PixelPest posted for a circle or ellipse. Other shapes can have a different number & placement of snapping points, depending on their symmetry (or lack thereof), the number of nodes on the curve, & maybe even which triangle is dragged. I haven't figured out the rules for that, but if you experiment with different types of shapes & open curves you should see what I mean.

Something else that might sometimes be useful to take advantage of is how the modifier keys change how dragging on the triangles work. The status bar at the bottom of the window shows the modifier key options when the pointer is over one of the triangles. For example, dragging with the shift key moves the text instead of the triangle, & with the CMD key (probably the CTRL key on Windows) moves the triangle pairs symmetrically.

Yes I understand about the text path snapping point, it seems completely no relationship to normal snapping, I just wondering why.

I also notice the modifier keys on the bottom, really nice feature.