Hi,

I am wondering of it is possible for a text to follow a spiral path but not from the center to the outside, as it is by default, but starting the sentence in the "widest point" of the spiral and and going to the center... Is this possible ?

Thanks a lot
roman

yes it can be done:

1. draw a spiral

2. the direction of the spiral probably won't be right (if you put text on it from the widest point it would be flipped backwards) so we need to change it > just flip the spiral horizontally (or vertically, it doesn't matter)

3. the text would now still read from the center outwards because the first node in the spiral is in the center, we need to reverse the path direction so that the first node is the "widest" one. To do that convert the spiral to a path (Path > Object to Path) and reverse it (Path > Reverse). You can check the first node by using Node tool and hitting Tab

4. Everything is ready now, put your text on the path (Text > Put on Path)

This brings up another question, which maybe I should create a new topic for.

Is there a way to change the path direction of shapes without converting them to a path? It'd be really nice if Reverse Path worked directly on shapes, at least the shapes that are treated as paths in the XML: ellipses , spirals , and polygons .

yes it would be nice but I guess it can't be done (Ive tried and failed), maybe it should be added to the feature list

That did the trick... thanks SO much !

Thank you so much for solving the path direction for spirals. I was so frustrated and unable to find any answers. This forum is brilliant and so helpful. thank you all and especially to you, Prkos