Words That Follow a Curve

A stamp, a seal, a medal, a coin: the words on them run round the edge, and they have run round the edge for as long as there have been seals. Set as an ordinary line, those same words lie flat across the middle and the object is no longer the object. Here they are laid along a path, given in the very words a letter's own outline is given in, and each letter is turned to stand on it. The seal on this page carries its name over the top of its ring; at the foot, the path bows the other way, so the words there stand upright instead of hanging upside down.

The path is walked by length rather than by angle, so two letters an inch apart along the curve are an inch apart on the page whatever the curve does between them: a tightening bend never crowds them together. A line can begin at the head of the path, at its middle — which keeps the words centred on the curve however long they turn out to be — or at its far end, so that it stops where the path stops. The three thin rules at the foot of the page are three paths, each carrying the same sentence begun in one of those places, with the path itself traced underneath.

What This Example Shows

  • The legend of a seal rides its ring, and its foot stands upright.
  • Letters are spaced along the curve's own length, so a tightening bend leaves them as far apart as a straight run does.
  • A line starts at the head of a path, at its middle, or at its end.

The Source Code, Complete

Nothing is left out and nothing is simplified: this is the program exactly as it runs, for the developer who uses this library. The third is the description itself: a plain list of what the page has to say, which is what the service is sent.

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The Document Itself

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Examples Near This One

Breaking an Overlong Word

A word longer than the column that holds it: the library leaves it whole, cuts it at the column's edge, or cuts it and closes the line on a hyphen.

Break Points After a Slash or a Hyphen

A justified column set four times: file paths and compounds running past the edge with no break points, wrapping where a break after a slash or a hyphen is allowed, then wherever their punctuation allows one, and last with no-break hyphens that keep each compound whole.

A Stack Laid out by Hand, One Box at a Time

A delivery slip poured into two boxes, the second taking up where the first stopped, and a poster whose picture no box can hold, each box saying what became of the stack in it.

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