[XeTeX] Curved text

[Gareth Hughes]

Vafa Khalighi wrote:
> I generally would use pst-text package to do this for me but pst-text
>  does not work with xetex as it depends on PostScript trickery 
> heavily. I am not sure if PGF & TIKZ would allow you to do this but 
> you can have a look at its manual.

I don't think pst-text is going to be a possible solution with XeTeX
either, unless someone can see a clever way of doing it.

Wilfred van Rooijen wrote:
> Maybe XeTeX and TikZ/PGF using the "text decorations" library 
> (section 27.5 of the TikZ manual)?

Vafa Khalighi wrote:
> I am not sure if PGF & TIKZ would allow you to do this but you can 
> have a look at its manual.

Looking at the manual, it says that each glyph is set in its own \hbox,
so that all kerning and ligatures would have to be made manually. For a
cursive RTL script like Syriac this isn't going to work, unless I only
curve texts that use words with ligatures no longer than two characters!

Vafa Khalighi wrote:
> Another option is using shapepar package, look at the package 
> documentation. I think it has got all the details you would need.

I've used shapepar before and love it, but it shapes a paragraph of
straight text rather than curving the text. In the end, this might have
to be the fallback solution to creating this decorative text.

Would anyone know if it's possible to create a straight line of text
with XeTeX and then curve it in gimp?