• Introduction
• Manual has moved!
• Why use Inkscape?
• Professional Software
• About this Book
• Installing Inkscape
• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Gnu/Linux
• Getting Around in Inkscape
• Interface
• Managing the Workspace
• Drawing with Geometrical Shapes
• Ways of Drawing with Inkscape
• Shape Tools
• The Selector Tool
• Squares and Rectangles
• Circles, Ellipses and Arcs
• Stars and Polygons
• Spirals
• 3D-Boxes
• Freehand Drawing
• Freehand Drawing
• The Pencil Tool
• The Pen Tool
• The Calligraphy Tool
• Boolean Operations
• About Nodes
• Editing Paths
• Stacking Order
• Align and Distribute
• The Node Tool
• Tracing an Image
• The Tweak Tool
• Color
• Colors
• The Color Palette
• The Fill And Stroke Dialog
• Custom Colors
• Copying a Color
• Creating Gradients
• Creating a Mesh Gradient
• Using Patterns
• Modifying Patterns
• Creating Custom Patterns
• Strokes
• Markers
• Ordering Markers, Stroke and Fill
• Customizing Markers
• Text
• Text
• Writing Text
• Styling Text
• Changing Text Color
• Moving and Rotating Letters
• Putting Text on a Path
• Flowing Text into a Frame
• Creating Custom Fonts
• Advanced Techniques
• Beyond the Basics
• Saving Your Work
• Exporting a PDF File
• Exporting a PNG File
• Exporting to other File Formats
• Importing Pictures into a Document
• Importing other File Formats
• Copying and Duplicating Objects
• Cloning Objects
• Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts
• Clipping and Masking
• Filters
• Extensions
• Live Path Effects
• Where to Go from Here
• Test Chapter (for trying out styling)

Styling Text

The dialog Text > Text and Font is ideal for modifying a text's style. Most of the options that are available in that dialog can also be found in the horizontal too. controls bar at the top of the canvas:

• a field where you can find the fonts that are installed on your computer
• the font style (bold, italic, condensed, regular etc.)
• the font size
• the line-height or spacing between lines
• the icons for the text alignment (left, right, centered)
• two icons for quickly adding superscript or subscript
• a field for setting the spacing between letters and one for the spacing between words
• two fields for horizontally and vertically shifting single or selected letters (kerning) and one for rotating them
• icons for changing the text's direction and orientation.

In the dialog, you will see a small preview of the result of your settings, and a tab labelled Text that can hold the whole text without displaying any styling. Once you have all parameters tweaked to your liking, you can click on Apply to make the result show up on the canvas.

The tab Variants allows you to activate specific features of certain fonts, like ligatures.

There are two options that influence the text's orientation. Inkscape offers support for vertical scripts, but it does not yetsupport scripts that are read from right to left. [Is this correct? Can someone check with Tav, other devs or with an Arabic/Hebrew speaking user?]

If I create a frame where the text will

The text tool's options

I write my text directly on the canvas

I hit Enter when I need to break a line

The Text and Font dialog