This tutorial will present you what you can do with the Artistic Text Shape, while this tutorial was done using Karbon, the shape is available in other KOffice applications, and will work in a similar way.

In this lesson you will

• create a text shape
• associate a text shape with a path

Tip

If a docker is not visible, you can either go to the "Settings > Dockers" menu, or right-click on a docker title, and then you can make that docker visible.

First step with a text shape

To add an artistic text shape, go to the "Add shape" docker, click on the "Artistic Text" icon, and drag it to the canvas.

After adding the shape, you might want to edit the text and display something more interesting, to do this, you need to activate the artistic text shape tool, either by double clicking on the newly created shape, or selecting in the toolbox. Then you can change the text to something like this.

Since you want a cool text, you will need to change the font, this is done by changing the properties in the shape properties docker, where you can change font, the style, and also the Offset which will be used to control the position of the text on a path shape.

After changing the font to "Steve", the size to 30pt, and setting bold, you can have the following shape in your canvas:

Path follower

This is still a very straight, flat text. Now we want a curvy text. To do this, we will need to create a path, for instance, using the Freehand Path Drawing Tool .

You should have something like this:

To associate the text with the curve, you need to activate the artistic text tool by double clicking on the text, or selecting .

Then, if you move the mouse on top of the curve you will see the cursor changing to a hand, you will need to click on the curve. In the Tool options docker, the Attach path icon is now enabled, and you need to click on it to attach the path. Using the offset in the Shape properties docker, you can adjust the text to get the following result:

You can detach the path by clicking on . You can translate, rotate and keep editing the text. If you change the curve, then the text will be updated.