Hello.

What I am trying to acheive seems simple..
I would like to stretch/pull out the bottom of some text, leaving the top of text as is.

I have tried envelope deformation and used lower nodes, however when I use this a straight line from a letter (such as B) becomes curved when stretching out.

I want to keep the text how it should be, but with a gentle stretched out look - wider at the bottom compared to the top. Nothing drastic.

Hope I have explained that well enough
Thanks, Rob.

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

I don't think Inkscape can do what you're asking, although we've had a few members asking about it, over the years. It seems like something that Inkscape should be able to do though. I wonder if there is a feature request at Launchpad? https://launchpad.net/inkscape

That said though, I have managed to do something like that, using Node Sculpting (Alt + drag node)



You can see that still some straight lines get curved. Clearly it's not the ideal solution. And may I say that using Envelope Deformation to do this was inspired! I'm not sure, if you had to settle on one way or the other, if it would be acceptable. In any case, if you want to play around with it, here's what I did.

1 -- Create Text
2 -- Path menu > Object to Path
3 -- Ungroup
4 -- Path menu > Combine
5 -- Enable snapping to nodes
6 -- Drag down a couple of Guides, and snap to top and bottom of text
7 -- Select text with Node tool, then Ctrl + A to select all the nodes
8 -- Hold Alt key, and grab a node that's closest to the corner on the bottom (in my example, the H on the right has nodes precisely in the corners) and drag outwards a little, making sure to snap to the Guide
9 -- Grab a corner node at the top and drag inwards a little. Do that on all 4 corners, moving top inwards, and bottom outwards. It seems to work better if you move in small increments, one corner at a time, rather than drag to the full distance in one drag.

I haven't tried using Env Deform, but I'll try that now. Maybe I can find some tricks that will help you (emphasis on maybe). I'll post again if I have any luck

luderob wrote:I have tried envelope deformation and used lower nodes, however when I use this a straight line from a letter (such as B) becomes curved when stretching out.

The path effect envelope deformation is very convenient and editable but it does curve straight lines. The extension modify path>envelope
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Extensions-ModifyPath.html#Extensions-Envelope
I have shown the location of the control paths in both and importantly the NODE ORDER of the control path in the second case. Note also the control path has to be selected last for this extension.

druban wrote:

luderob wrote:I have tried envelope deformation and used lower nodes, however when I use this a straight line from a letter (such as B) becomes curved when stretching out.

The path effect envelope deformation is very convenient and editable but it does curve straight lines.

Not necessarily ;-)
(sample file attached - created with Inkscape 0.48.2 (!) - live-updating text (as text) being stretched without curving using envelope deformation LPE)

~suv wrote:(sample file attached - created with Inkscape 0.48.2 (!) - live-updating text (as text) being stretched without curving using envelope deformation LPE)

Details: similar to this earlier example (the trick being not to bend the envelope paths themselves - stretching can be achieved by increasing their length, and by moving them further away), but also using Johan Engelen's [1] tip about Re: Distorting text (to link the original text as pattern for a pattern-along-path LPE first, and apply the envelope deformation as stacked LPE on the path with the pattern along text LPE already applied). Here's another mail from Johan describing the same trick (including a sample file): Re: Expanding text.

[1] Johan being the main author of live path effects in Inkscape! :)

thanks, ~suv! That's useful to know. It's an area of Inkscape that seems to get a lot of attention!

~suv wrote:the trick being not to bend the envelope paths themselves - stretching can be achieved by increasing their length, and by moving them further away

I have found that this particular method still yields curved results if the paths deviate from absolute horizontal(top/bottom) and vertical(left/right). Although I am sure for most applications this would not be a problem.

Arrgh! I forgot about the the Env Deform extension! I kept thinking that there should be a way to do this, but I just couldn't remember what it is.

Thanks for sharing the file ~suv. I've used that LPE many times, but I thought the checkboxes for enabling bend paths caused the bend paths to be displayed or not displayed. But instead, it appears to stop the bending or deformation either top and bottom or left and right. That's a very important distinction! I expect that's probably explained in the manual. But for better intuituve use, I wonder if the wording on those checkboxes could be better? Like "enable top and bottom deform" rather than "enable top and bottom paths".

Also, if I understand what you did, you used PAP first, and then Env Deform on top of it. But it could also be done without the PAP, if you didn't want that much stretching, right? I keep thinking that the op said "...a gentle stretch..."

brynn wrote:Also, if I understand what you did, you used PAP first, and then Env Deform on top of it. But it could also be done without the PAP, if you didn't want that much stretching, right? I keep thinking that the op said "...a gentle stretch..."

If you read Johan's original messages (links are in my second comment), it's all explained there: the trick with (or reason to) stacking "Envelope Deformation" on top of "Pattern along Path" is to keep the original text as text (i.e. in my sample file you can edit the text as text - e.g. change the font family, or insert a character, and the stretched copy will auto-update all along) - of course you can first convert the text to path if you prefer, and omit the 'Pattern along Path' effect (i.e. apply the 'Envelope Deformation directly to the group of paths).

Oh, I see what you mean now. If you don't use PAP, you'll have to convert text to path, right? So if the op didn't want that much stretch (and didn't want to convert to path) they could use PAP, and just make the path shorter, for less stretch. And then use Env Deform (with proper settings).