Pen tool all about lines

[Chris26]

What is that red sqiggely line underneath the letters?  It seems to appear sometimes and then on other letters not be there?

Is it possible to change colour and stroke to a line once you have letters on it.  Green line was no problem, but I can not find a way to change the top line, all the stroke and colour affects the text instead.

 

[Old Bruce]

Convert to Text on a Path and the path/stroke becomes a container for the text, it has no real dimensions which could take colour or thickness. Double the line before choosing to do test on a path.

The red squiggling line is your spell checker.

[Chris26]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Convert to Text on a Path and the path/stroke becomes a container for the text, it has no real dimensions which could take colour or thickness. Double the line before choosing to do test on a path.

The red squiggling line is your spell checker.

The first paragraph I don't understand, sorry, how do I convert to text when it is already text?  What do you mean the strke/path becomes a container?  Anyway in a nutshell do you mean that you can or you can't edit a line when text is already typed on its path?

The red line threw me since I do not have that when typing normal text, how do I get rid of that please?

[Old Bruce]

You have a line you can set the colour width etc.

Then you want to put text on that line, the line must be converted to a container for the text. The letters can be coloured etc but the line can no longer be coloured because there are limitations to what we can do at this point in the software. The line is just a place for the letters to sit, for some reason it was decided to not allow that line to be coloured etc.

With no container for the text the letters would all fall to the bottom of the page, but not really. That is silly. You can move the line around you can change its shape but you can't colour it for no reason other than we can't colour it.

To get rid of the squiggling line you have to turn off Check Spelling While Typing it is in the Text > Spelling menu in Designer and Publisher. It is a bit buggy though so it may come back on.

and you can try shutting it off in the Character Studio by setting language to None.

[Chris26]

Ok thanks for the spelling thing.  Now then, I just created a thick line with the pen tool, gave it an 'orrible green colour, typed text and everything dissappeared except the text of course.  So I assume the answer is no, you can not type text on a line that is visble, nor can you colour it, nor can you thicken it?  Is this correct, so in other words it is a photoshop job if I need to do creative text on any line?

As an annoying note for you, I absolutely do not understand what you mean by this :  " the line must be converted to a container for the text."  How?  what do you mean?

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, Chris26 said:

I absolutely do not understand what you mean by this :  " the line must be converted to a container for the text."  How?  what do you mean?

I guess I could be clearer, a lot clearer.

When you click on it with the text tool it is converted to a container for the text.

I would just double the line, make a copy in the same place, and then group them.

example.afdesign

[walt.farrell]

Have you checked the Designer Help, @Chris26?

Specifically, this might help: https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/pages/Text/pathText.html

[Chris26]

Old Bruce, thankyou, I stepped outside for a coffee to take a break and only then did I realise what you meant and rushed back in to edit my stupid message   ---   too late, but thankyou also for the example I will look at it.

Walt, yes I read this earler on before trying to teach myself this part of publisher which I have never used nor used in any software programme because the pen tool with all its nodes and complex functions scared me, never needed it.  But I wanted to learn it.  Trouble is no matter how much you think you understand what is written, when you do it for the first time you hit problems that don't seem to be covered in a tutotial.

[Old Bruce]

5 minutes ago, Chris26 said:

I stepped outside for a coffee to take a break and only then did I realise what you meant and rushed back in to edit ...

My problem when I do that "ohhh... That is what he meant." thing, I forget while doing the rushing back part, and I am stuck with the "Damnit. I had it." attitude for the rest of the day.

[Chris26]

On 6/28/2019 at 9:35 PM, Old Bruce said:

My problem when I do that "ohhh... That is what he meant." thing, I forget while doing the rushing back part, and I am stuck with the "Damnit. I had it." attitude for the rest of the day.

Hallo Old Bruce, Its driving me nuts.....  I first made a line with the pen tool, applied colour and stroke, then attempted to make another line on top of my drawn line so it becomes a retainer for the artistic text with the already drawn and coloured line in position.  Well my pen drawing skills are cruddy and I am not skilled enough to trace on top of another line with millions of nodes allover the place.   So plan B, Coffee.   Plan C, did the artistic text tool first, wrote the text.  Copied that and pasted.  Deleted the text and attempted to apply a colour and stroke.  Nothing niks zilch, a whole hour of messing around Old Bruce,  It's infuriating such a simple demand from myself.  Screen shot shows the text with a line underneath but this is just a retainer line.  (Getting used to that word now).  Please could you be a sport and show me in baby steps what I am doing wrong.

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, Chris26 said:

Hallo Old Bruce, Its driving me nuts.....  I first made a line with the pen tool, applied colour and stroke, then attempted to make another line on top of my drawn line so it becomes a retainer for the artistic text with the already drawn and coloured line in position.  Well my pen drawing skills are cruddy and I am not skilled enough to trace on top of another line with millions of nodes allover the place.   So plan B, Coffee.   Plan C, did the artistic text tool first, wrote the text.  Copied that and pasted.  Deleted the text and attempted to apply a colour and stroke.  Nothing niks zilch, a whole hour of messing around Old Bruce,  It's infuriating such a simple demand from myself.  Screen shot shows the text with a line underneath but this is just a retainer line.  (Getting used to that word now).  Please could you be a sport and show me in baby steps what I am doing wrong.

Plan D: Draw the line, Duplicate it  then choose one to write on and keep the other one to colour. I would suggest Grouping them so you can move them around.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, Chris26 said:

then attempted to make another line on top of my drawn line so it becomes a retainer for the artistic text with the already drawn and coloured line in position.  Well my pen drawing skills are cruddy and I am not skilled enough to trace on top of another line with millions of nodes allover the place. 

Once you've created the first line as you want it, just tell the application to duplicate it (Cmd+J). No need to try to do it manually.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Chris26 said:

It's infuriating such a simple demand from myself.  Screen shot shows the text with a line underneath but this is just a retainer line.

Personally, I think using words like "container" or "retainer" are not necessarily the best way to describe this feature. As @Old Bruce mentioned above, the important thing to keep in mind is Text on a path is a variation of Artistic text that involves converting the curve to path text, so it is pointless to add color or a stroke to it.

[Chris26]

Walt and Old Bruce,  Just got up this morning, made some toast, sat down and read your messages while marmalade dripped on the letter 'V'.  Thought to myself, that is exactly what I have been doing, That is what I spent Two hours doing.  Casually went to affinity after wiping the letter 'V' and with half baked eyes and hair looking like ronald macdonald but without the colour I casually and with one huge sigh that blew my cat out the window I duplicated my line ( not copy paste which is what I have been doing), and stuck it underneath the most famous name in Ireland.  12 seconds and it was done, what!  Ugh!.... what's all the fuss about, this is a doddle, what the hell was I doing last night then?. Double checked my stupidity on the screen and created another problem, can't remember exactly what it was that I was getting frustrated about, now my cat is looking at me after climbing back in and her eyes clearly communicating the fact that she did not deserve that.  Ah me thinks to myself - 138 views and rising - fiddlemedooleys -  I should charge for this self-debasing comedy show I just put on.  Oh just to alleviate your pain at my suffering, it was not two hours, more like 20 minutes, yes yes I know, we all exaggerate when in a bad temper and the keyboard becomes a victim and 20 minutes does not read as helplessly lost as reading the words two hours?  Please forgive me.    Oh and just to warn you, I'll probbly be back...............