I am building something from a scan, and I am a newbie.

I know how to align text to a path. But how do we align 'items' to a path--In this case letters that are 'not-text'-- just vector'd shapes i pulled from the scan. I had to pull them off another curved path -- and I could manually add them to the new curved path I've drawn rotating each and manually placing them, but i'm wondering if there is a more elegant way.

Your help is appreciated. Thank you.

Hello there,

the easiest trick would be to use the pattern along path live path effect, through the lpe editor tab-, to bend the text shaped path.
Unlike the text on path option, this will result in a distorted shape.

A non-distorting solution would be converting characters to markers and assign them individually to small paths, though it would be as intuitial with the right spacing as doing the rotation manually for each letter.

How many shapes do you need to align? If there is no satisfactory automatic way, it is likely to be easier manually tipping each one so they look right.