Text to Path

[Visio Guy]

Hi Nerds!

I've been wanting to do this for years, and finally revisited it. Visio has no way of converting text into paths, or vectors that can be edited like shapes.

The workaround I've used is to create text in Inkscape, convert it to paths, save as SVG, then import to Visio. Not the simplest of workflows, but it provided results.

The idea is to make a tool, and ultimately a ribbon button that could act on the selected shape, and I've now got the core bits working! I used System.Windows.Drawing (WPF stuff, see System.Windows.FontStyle, FormattedText.BuildGeometry), and ChatGPT 4o gave some hints at how to go about processing stuff. Of course, it wasn't 100% correct, but I was able to interpret its answer and convert stuff to Visio ShapeSheet rows and cells!

[Visio Guy]

Here'r some samples. Converted vector shapes are on the right (see the colored outlines?  )

That Dot Matrix font is a doozy! Those aren't even circles after conversion, they're 109, 9-row geometry sections, using RelCubBezTo row types!

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[Visio Guy]

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[Thomas Winkel]

I'm not sure if I understood that correctly. You write text in Visio and choose a font. Your program then traces this with cubic Bézier curves?

Then you can use any shape properties to format the text?
Line color, fill color, gradients, transparency, patterns, sketch, reflection ...

Very cool

[Visio Guy]

Yes, you understand perfectly! Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, and similar illustration programs typically have some sort of "text to paths" command to do this. Then you can chop up the shapes and modify letters, in addition to having separate line and fill attributes.

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