Hello every glad Inkscapers, I am glad to find you in this nice forum. Inkscape is a marvellous program and I should like to learn it.
I should like to transform two letters in a text and leave the rest untouched. I supposed that I could ungroup the text, but it was impossible. How shall I do this?
Edited: I could do this with Path>Break apart, but when I do it, the a and the p becomes filled. (I use font Gradl )

When you say transform, what is it exactly you want to do? as you can do most linear movement / scaling through kerning and font size changes. If you want rotation you'll have to break it apart. if you break it apart and the o's p's etc get filled in, just drag a selection box across each of them in turn, and do combine to make the outer and inner paths one shape again.

In addition Simarilius's suggestion you might find that converting the text to a path (Path > Object to Path) and editing the characters with the node edit tool to be sufficient. But, yeah, it depends on what you're trying to do.

Thank you, it is fine now. I make a logo for a hair-stylist and the name is Faluklippet. My idea is to make an animated scissor of the 2 p. So I make the hanging shafts longer, I turn the first one (you may think, it is the same thing to type a q...) and I rotate both so they cross each other. Is there any symmetrical rotating? Otherwise I can make all the changes with one of the them, then duplicate it and flip horizontally.
This Gradl is very fine, but too thin it doesn't offer too much funny formatting. I have to make it thicker, at least the scissor, without loosing the character of the font.
Edit: Done. the p-scissors are very fine. Now I should like to apply some chrome-shine. I don't know, how it works with so peaky letters. Or any other idea, how to give some color and 3d effect to this?

This post has details about creating a chrome effect - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=95#p528

Thank you. I made after this tutorial: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/video ... ep030.html
and the result is not so perfect:
The font is too thin. I like it very much, but the dynamic offset had not any effect and the blur was not so nice on it. That is too blue uppside, I shall make it better. Now I shall animate the scissors. What do you think, is this a good logo for a hairstyler?

For someone not familiar with the name (i.e. Me) I would have been confused over which letter/s the scissors were replacing, had you not already said they were P's. I think they look too much like scissors and not enough like characters. Maybe if they had more of a stem before the blades crossed it would help them look more like P's.

Maybe I shall use this only in animation. The logotype will be like "Farstakliqpet"(the q is a little confusing, but that is not unusual with flipped letters in logo). The word klippet is exactly similar usual world in Swedish like clipping in English, so you can look at the word "Brooklyn-cliqping" as logo. But not exactly the same, because q is not usual in Swedish, so the first sight of q in a swedish text feels as a flipped p. Is it readable if you know that it is a hair-stylist? qp can be very tight together, as a closed scissor. Looks silly? Than qp make fast 4-5 fast scissor-movements sometimes, maybe every 30 seconds on the homepage. What do you think?

I figured it might have been another language in which case it may be more obvious to others. It's nice work otherwise.

Thank you. But it is a not so clear in Swedish either. Maybe I shell use pp in the logo, and animate the turning p.

1 Turn the first p to q,
2. slant both to crossing them as you see on my image,
3. clipping movements,
4. close the scissors,
5. divorce them to qp
6. flip the q to usual p and let the logo rest a while.

The problem is that I cannot animate in Inkscape yet, but I suppose, it will not be too difficult.

Now I wanted to make this logo suitable for animation and broke and group the letters so that the 2 p would easily ungrouped after the chrome-effect manipulation. I grouped them again (p and p last, individually) and I tried to make the same chrome-effect according to heathenx tutorial. Now the Path>difference didn't work. The Dynamic offset didn't work first time either. However, I couldn't get the same chrome effect on this logo. Can you give me some advice?

Can you post the file?

I try. Just now is something curious with my Imageshack toolbar. As soon as I click on upload, the Firefox die down. Only disappears. Again and again. But this is not a question on this forum. Can I send it on other way than ImageShack?

I don't think ImageShack allows uploading of SVG files. You could try the services listed here, viewtopic.php?f=22&t=7 but I think only MediaMax is going to allow SVG files.

EDIT: Actually, try this site http://www.mediafire.com/. No registration is required.

ImagesShack kills Firefox as soon as I click upload. But never mind. It would be easiest to send you e-mail. I cannot find your e-mail . I suppose, you have mine, so please, send me your address. Otherwise I can show my address here.
EDIT. Very-very curious. The same thing happens with as soon as I click upload, even Image Ox and at Media Fire upload kills Firefox for me. That is something with Firefox. I hope, that is not any virus. I shall try Explorer.
EDIT Terrible. The same with Explorer. What is this? I shall start again my computer.

i have just asked Ivan to email me his svg file so that i can post it for others. Ivan has asked for my help with animating the scissors but others may wish to play with the svg as well. as soon as i hear back from him i'll post back.

ok, Ivan was having internet problems today so he told me what font that he was using and i cheaply recreated it and made a simple animation for him. however, i didn't quite get it right. he wishes to have a more advanced animation. even though i think the graphics can all be done in inkscape the work would be tedious. i would advise Ivan to look for a proper animation package, for instance xara.

here is what i made for him. i didn't bother applying the chrome metalic gradients for this prototype.



Here are the supporting files.
http://misc.heathenx.org/ivan_animation.zip

i made the animation with kim (http://bouveyron.free.fr/kim/demo.html)

Nice work heathenx. You've proven Ivan's idea to be quite effective.

I know if I was to do this, I would have "Farstakli et" on one layer, then create each frame of "qp" on a seperate layer each. And I would use "Clone" to make sure I could tweak the shapes of "qp" and have it replicate for each frame.

thanks.

yes, putting things on layers is definitely one way to do it...but i didn't do it that way. i used the transform tool and rotated each side of the scissors 1 degree and exported the image. i repeated those steps until the scissors were closed. the more images you make the smoother the animation. half-assed maybe.

unfortunately, Ivan wants the image to fly in from a side, do some stuff and then stop. regardless, i think i have given him enough examples on how to do it. he should be able to either go from there or use a different tool/application for the animation.

Hello, I am back again. That was a curious problem with the map My images - it killed down the browser as soon as clicked on it. It is not impossible that it has something to do with my trying to animate Inkscape, maybe I did some mistake with the script.
Heathenx, thanks a lot for your tutorials and your work with my idea. No, I don't want any flying scissors. I want have the still word as logo on the website, and sometimes, as a surprise, the qp-scissors make 4-5 very fast cliping-movements. Maybe 1 time every minute. The movement reminds about the hard-working hair-stylist, they clip very fast, than take another part of hair and clip again. (But my qp-scissors will not leave their place in the text) This fits in the context that it is better on a website if it is not too much movements. This little surprise with moving letters can keep the visitor, waiting for the next cliping. ("Did it really move or was it an illusion?")
My question was mainly the chrome-effect. Does it depend on the thiny fonts that the Path Difference and the Dynamic offset had not any effect?

Ivan wrote:My question was mainly the chrome-effect. Does it depend on the thiny fonts that the Path Difference and the Dynamic offset had not any effect?

Are you saying that when you apply a gradient fill to the object you can't use Path Difference or Dynamic Offset? The fill should have no effect on these functions or any other function so it's most likely something else. Which brings me back to, can you post the SVG file online?

At least, I could upload it:
http://www.mediafire.com/?4y6kcbdjcyr
No, not the Gradient. According the tut I make a black copy, then a white copy on it, move the white a little and take the Difference. It doesn't work.
Then make a dynamic on the other - please, take a look on the tut...

make sure that your text is a path first before doing any boolean operations.

You need to ungroup the paths (you currently have groups within groups so make sure you ungroup them all) and then select all the paths and 'combine' them. This will create one path that you can perform boolean operations on as, as heathenx suggests.

I cannot let go of the qp-scissors. I made it very nice. Somewhere, somehow I got a very fine outline, and I don't know, how. You see the logo with outline on the right side. I should like do the same with the other, because I want to animate, but I cannot reproduce it.
http://www.mediafire.com/?eckwblgd0um
How did I this?
Another question: I cannot use the gradiant tool on this. Why not?