My twopenny-worth:

I was recently mulling over adapting my script to use all fonts and not just my own joined-up fonts - although this seems to go against the original reason writing the script in the first place.

I am interested in hearing Dinasset's purpose behind using a script such as the one he has in mind. Is it to use the repeating text as a decorative device? Or is it to provide a background effect for one of his many other filters? As others have pointed out, the abrupt changes in paths around most objects lead to severe deformations - stretching and compressing the paths. Any compensating filters would have a serious amount of work to do to avoid unpleasant looking side-effects.

My attempts at keeping the integrity of the letter shapes led me down the route of creating a layer for each separate letter and then (optionally) merging the layers together.

Here are some of the results using Gimp 2.9.7 - Partha's portable version - with a long text string around an oak leaf.

First image: Gimp's own Path to Text with my Italic Variations font at 60pt. You can clearly see the deformations.



Second image: My script with default settings at the same size. Letter shapes show less deformations and the text finishes at the end of the path - but not a satisfactory outcome.



Third image: With the smallest amount of extra space between individual letters. Better or worse - I can't tell!



Conclusion: Same as everybody else - a lot of manual work/tweaking involved in creating a pleasant effect it seems.

As written in the initial request, the idea is to use "text along path" not only for paths with very limited length but also for long or very long paths by "repeating" the input string.
Initially I was thinking about the contour of an object but after Ofnuts' comment on the bad results which can come out from non smoothed transitions (you confirm), I'm now more of the idea of using created paths around or inside the object.

The one thing that has always gotten me was when one stubborn letter, usually in the middle of a sentence, would face the opposite direction.

OK, got something working, just have to do some more testing and write the doc before publishing.

Wonderful, thanks a lot Ofnuts !

Playing with my next version - to see if repeat along path will work.
Seems to be do-able - in some form at least.

"Hello " entered into the text box and set to auto-repeat.

The devils is in the details.. how to deal with the kerning when you splice the character string to itself, for instance.

I also uncovered a Gimp shortcoming that was already at play in the older version, but is more visible in the newer version where the likeliness of small characters is higher. Fixed now, but I took me several hours to figure out.

Fantastic, Ofnuts.
Thanks a lot.

First quick and simple example of use.

I noticed that if you draw 2 paths, then merge them, the text goes only along one (in my case the innermost).
Is it wanted ?
It was just a try...
Drawn a rectangle select, then to path.
Drawn an inner ellipse select, then to path.
Merged the 2 paths, run the filter, got the text on the inner ellipse path.

Thank you, Ofnuts.

See "Path" in the Usage notes in the doc in the ZIP.

I see.
Thanks.

Thanks for the new version.

My first surprise (though great features):
Lateral wiggle, Vertical wiggle, Tilt wiggle only random?
In particular, Tilt wiggle should be available as a new option - right-to-left text (not inverted) and frequently searched options from top-to-bottom.
This add-on does not require much coding (I changed it for my own needs) - but it can be very useful for many users.

Superficially, yes, but the devil is in the details(*).

If you reverse the characters (Stunfo) the kerning is on the wrong side. If you need this you can just as well provide the reversed text and reverse the path direction.

For vertical text the script computes a position using the character width, so if you make the text vertical this position is likely wrong. There is also no easy way to tell the actual height of a character... So vertical text implemented the quick-and-dirty way will only work with all-uppercase text (hoping for no diacritics over the letters) and a fixed width font (otherwise, letters such as "I" will be squeezed vertically). IMHO vertical text implemented properly is another (quite different) script.

(*) about three quarters of the code is caring about the details...

This is being fixed

Good news !

Fixed, so you can, now use it also for animations:



Yes, this is a python written in python written in python.

Nifty..