Hello. Just started using Inkscape, so forgive me if this seems like a silly question. I've searched, but nothing there.

When I flow text into a shape I have two problems ...

1) The text goes right up to the boundary, so my stroke path inteferes with it. I can resize the text box, but it squishes the text (only small, but a pity all the same) and it isn't easy to get consistent across different boxes/shapes. Is there a way of controlling how the text/shape flow is handled, like an offset value?

2) When I "unflow" the text or "convert to text", I only get a little box near the middle of the left hand edge. I no longer get a resize handle in the bottom right corner, as you do with a new text box. Can I get the handle back? If not, I have to create a new box and copy/paste the text in order to get the box size that I need. Any clues?

Thanks in advance.

1. Just move the text after you flow it (don't grab the frame but the actual text object), move it away from the edge of the frame (I guess that's offset you mentioned)

2. Normal text object is the one with the baseline marked on the left side. The one you're asking about is a special feature called Flowed text frame, you create it by click and dragging with the text tool. To create a normal text object you just click with the text tool and start writing, that is what you get as a result of converting Flowed text back to normal text object.

Thanks for the quick answer prkos.

1) That works okay, but doesn't give me any consistency from shape to shape. Shame I can't define an offset (e.g. 5mm from the left and right edges of the text frame, like you might do in MS Word). Still, it's lovely programme and free, so I'm certainly not complaining, I'll just scale my text by 90% using the transform tools each time and that'll be good enough (doesn't distort the text at least, just isn't an entirely consistent offset as it's a proportion of the size, not an absolute offset).

2) Very useful, thanks. I see now that the trick is to always use shapes and flow the text into them, so that the single line text object is only a temporary situation each time.

Thanks again. Much appreciated.

Another possible solution to giving the text margins: Make a duplicate of the framing object, reduce its size a bit, then use the smaller duplicate as the text frame. Set the smaller duplicate to be completely transparent, and you're done.