I am very new to Inkscape so forgive my simple question. The end goal is to cut this out on vinyl. I want my text to curve (like a half circle) and for the each letter to be attached to the one beside it. I was able to Put on Path to get the curve. When I do this I cannot seem to get my text to union (Path | Union) so all the letters will be connected. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

You have to move the letters together before you convert to a path and union them. The text tool has a letter spacing parameter you can change, and individual letter spaces can be change by moving the text cursor where you want and using alt+cursors to move them.

-Rob A>

While you are using you can use the alt+arrow keys to kern the letters closer by clicking in between the letters you want to make closer or selecting several that you want to move at once. You can do this even after the text is on a path.

You can also convert the text to a path object, ungroup (text converted to a path is grouped in most recent versions), combine, copy to the clipboard, draw or select the path to put it on, go to path menu>path effect editor, select pattern on path from the drop down menu, then click the from clipboard icon, then click the icon to let you edit the pattern on canvas. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but you can then edit your letters at the node level and see instantly what it will look like bent to the path.


Anyway with both methods if you want to union the letters you will have to convert object to path first, if you try to directly union unconverted text that overlaps you will get odd intersection dropouts...and the pattern on path has to be converted as well to get rid of the overlapping areas with path union.