Flipped Text (2000/SR2)

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I’ve got a need to use mirror image text. Visio does nicely at flipping shapes and groups of shapes along a vertical axis, but in a feature that’s convenient for 99.99% of object flipping (but not my specific need), text boxes and tags attached to shapes retain correct left/right orientation, even when the shapes or boxes themselves are flipped.

So I turn to my trusted Sun Source of applications knowledge – you guys. Anyone know a way to flip text or a work-around?

As ever, thanks in advance.

ksalazar, proposal drone

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I would expect that this can be carried out by your printer driver software rather than the Visio application itself. I would prepare the artwork as per normal and then use the output device drivers to do the mirroring.

Check the advanced settings in the print setup dialog. Attached is the capture of where I choose this setting with my printer driver. Your mileage may vary according to which printers you choose. Perhaps this capability is unique to Postscript devices.

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Excellent suggestion, if I wanted all the text on the page to read mirrored*. But I just want one text box among the dozens on the page flipped. I’m beginning to think I need to draw out the words using shapes rather than text, because I can’t see any other way to do it. Suggestions most welcome!

Again thanks,

-k.

* We used to do the printer flipping the page trick to make printouts of driving directions. When laid on a car’s dashboard, the righted semi-reflection of the mirrored text in the windshield was a poor man’s heads-up data display.

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To flip only one item, create it normally then cut it and choose Edit>Paste Special and paste it back onto the page as a picture. Then right click the picture and choose Shape>Flip Horizontal

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Thanks!

While this should work and probably does in current Visio versions, I’m afraid that in my ancient version of Visio Strange Things Happen when text goes through the paste special function. First, regardless of the paste special option picked, any shape pasted that way loses its fill color, and the ability to be re-colored. That’s not so big a deal, as I can always separate the box bearing the base shape and the one containing the text, then overlay the text on the base shape. The second is that no matter how the box is flipped, the text never becomes mirrored on the vertical axis. Rotated, yes; but mirror-flipped – no.

But your base idea is very good, so I tried it in out in Microsoft Paint, hoping to do my flipping there, then paste back into Visio. Surprise of surprises! I get the same problem when I paste my Visio-created text into Microsoft. Paint Text rotates clockwise and counterclockwise, but never mirror-flips along the vertical axis. BUT text composed native in Paint CAN be flipped to appear in mirror image.

I’ve kludged up an interim solution using your idea via MPaint, but I think that the text rotation thing may be a bug in Visio 2000. I suspect I’ll have to finally shell out to upgrade my ancient version to the current one.

Again thanks!

K.im, just because the software is old doesn’t mean it isn’t (mostly) useful

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