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Text along an arc..

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brax64
Posts: 172
Joined: July 8th, 2018, 8:05 pm

Text along an arc..

Post by brax64 »

The title says it all... :D

I was wondering if there's is any way to place a text around a circle, or a section of it.
Any hint will be much appreciated.

Thank you in advance
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jsmorley
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Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Text along an arc..

Post by jsmorley »

Not really. You might be able to do something with TransformationMatrix, that, with some important limitations, could curve a string meter. To be honest though, my response has to be "no".

https://www.google.com/search?sitesearch=forum.rainmeter.net&q=text+arc
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brax64
Posts: 172
Joined: July 8th, 2018, 8:05 pm

Re: Text along an arc..

Post by brax64 »

jsmorley wrote: September 17th, 2020, 9:57 pm Not really. You might be able to do something with TransformationMatrix, that, with some important limitations, could curve a string meter. To be honest though, my response has to be "no".
Yep, I did try first with transformation matrices, but I only get weird result,. some sort of "rotation/skewing" but the result are not even close to "follow an arc"...
Well, it will remain in my wish list for now then... :)
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Yincognito
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Re: Text along an arc..

Post by Yincognito »

brax64 wrote: September 17th, 2020, 10:04 pm Yep, I did try first with transformation matrices, but I only get weird result,. some sort of "rotation/skewing" but the result are not even close to "follow an arc"...
Well, it will remain in my wish list for now then... :)
As always, my answer is that it IS possible, and although it will be hugely inconvenient, the limitations mentioned by jsmorley regarding the mouse actions can quite easily be solved.

I'm on mobile now so can't post workable code, but what you'd do is:
- use single characters instead of a multi character string
- apply the appropriate position and Angle option on each String meter
- solve the limitations by using either a text height thick Roundline meter or a text height thick Arc Shape AS A CONTAINER, so that mouse actions are triggered only if it's over that container instead of the still horizontal rectangular "frames" of the meters holding the rotated characters

It will be a bit more difficult to properly design the rotation formulas and the character meters' positions, not to mention being much easier to either use single characters or the whole string to create a similar image in Photoshop that you can use in a similar way, but it is nevertheless possible without any drawbacks beside the huge inconvenience.
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