Hello,

I'm new to inkscape and I'm currently trying to include a text in a path without having the path covering the letter ?

I can manage to do it by adding nodes and deleting the part of the path on the text but I have a lot of figures with many paths of this kind and I would like to find a proper way to do it and also to always have the same space between the letter and the path.

To be more clear I attached a jpg of what I would like to do.

I didn't find any topic related about this in the forum neither on internet.

Thanks in advance for the help

Lolain01

Maybe like so:

Thanks for your answer.

I thought about this method too but the problem is that this drawing SVG file is then exported as an EMF file to be used in a word document and if the background is not white you will see the white frame.

Is there any other solution ?

Thank you

If you're just drawing straight arrows, it could be interesting to use mid markers :

• Type a letter (it's wise to use a center justified text)
• Draw a white filled rectangle, slightly bigger than text.
• Group them. Duplicate this group (smarter : clone it).
• While the duplicate or clone is still selected, do object > object to marker)

The idea is to draw a segment (2 nodes), give it an end arrowhead marker, as you did, add a node to this path and use the marker you created as mid marker.

You can move with node tool this node to fine tune the path. You can move the path, the marker follows. You can also set the exact orientation  of this marker regarding to the path.

The drawback is that if you add other nodes to this path, there will be a marker for each added nodes.

 But this solution doesn't fit to you needs, regarding to transparency.

Perhaps split the path then:

Thanks for your help.

The problem is that paths are not always 0 or 90° but could be 45° or 50° so textbox doesn't always correspond exactly to the dimension of the text and therefore I have different paths dimension on each side.

So I think that there is no easy solution except doing it manually.

Hold down ctrl+alt to maintain the angle when dragging a node along its path.

I finally found a solution which is to create a box and that matches the dimensions that I need to remove on the path and then breaking the path between the intersection points of the path and the box.

Thanks a lot for the help.

One other way is to use a rectangle or circle horizontally aligned with the text, (this rectangle must be atop the line), select line and rectangle and do object > clip > set inverse clip (LPE).

But to me inverse clip is quite buggy and once done, it seems to be difficult to get rid of inverse clip (object ot path and the habitual flattening options don't seem to work there).

After selecting red circle and line in my last post, you can try to use Cut and remove by shape extension (you need to install it). You'll need to select path with node tool and do path > reverse to get the right arrows back (I did not understand why : probably node numbering after using the extension).

Thanks a lot for it is very helpful ! 😁