Reform Text Technical Note

Reform Text is implemented as an Adobe Illustrator plugin group. This means that it takes control of the so-called edit art, in this case the Text Box object and the Path object. However the edit art is still editable using all of Illustrator's functionality. However due to some internal problems to Illustrator we have had to provide special logic to allow interactive editing of text. Hence it is necessary to have a mode for editing the text and a mode for editing the curve.

By pressing the Release button, the Reform Text object will be deleted, and the edit art will be placed back on the artboard. If there are problems editing the edit art, due to weaknesses in the Illustrator system, then releasing the edit art then applying Reform Text again with the Make button is a workaround.   

The text on the path is the result art. The resulting art is the art that is passed to Illustrator for rendering. You can apply styles to it in the normal manner. However it cannot be manipulated. To do that, it is necessary to expand it. This will delete the Reform Text object, the Text Frame object, and the path. You can expand either using Adobe's native expand menu command Object > Expand Appearance or the Expand button shown in the panel. Whilst these should achieve the same result, they use different logic internally. The Astute Graphics button is provided partly for convenience, partly so that there is a fallback if one expand command fails.