I've watched the tutorial on UTube and read the manual regarding Prespective.
I'm new to Inkscape. I set my text to path and make sure the quadrilateral is a path,
draw from bottom left corner, then clockwise, select the quadrilateral first, then shift-select
text, go to Effects>Modify Path>Prespetive and a solid black panel displays in upper, left with a
blinking "_" , says something like prespective is working, then next I lose the quadrilateral.
Nothing happens. What am I doing wrong? I checked my program file path and see that I have
Numpy installed. Will appreciate someones' help. Starchy

I'm not familiar with the process. Do you have links to the resources you have referred to?

Here's the tutorial....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMbIPleM ... re=related

Here's the manual reference.....http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... erspective

I followed your instructions (or thought I did), and it worked for me.

Some repeats later, I worked out that I selected Text First, Quadrilateral Second, and that works,
while Quad First, Text Second, doesn't.

It's stated the wrong way round in the manual.

Thanks Slow Dog, I didn't think about trying the reverse. The UTube tutorial and
manual really specified that text first, then quadrilateral. I think the man on UTube
said he was using v .45. I have .46 which I'm sure you have. Seems during the update
that something jumped the track between actual usage and instructions.
May I recommend that you report this problem/bug to some Administrative Tech.
so they are both on the same page. Thanks again....Starchy.

@Starchy

The "man" you are referring to in the YouTube screencast is none other than Richard Querin, the second half (or maybe the first half) of the Screencasters. You can see a better version of that tut here: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/episode-015. Click on the monitor image if you wish to watch the Flash version.

Inkscape 0.45 and 0.46 are different now regarding the proper order of perspective selection. Notice that we added a little note in the episode 015 to warn users of that change.

I've had the perspective effect do some really weird things on me. The other night I was using to make some pillars. I had 3 point path which I dupped and combined into one path. Then I made a quadrilateral. When I used the perspective effect on the two paths instead of putting the combined path into quadrilateral it keep putting the quadrilateral into the first pillar of the combination path. I tried a lot of stuff to make to work, but eventually ended up reboot and re-drawing everything in a new file. I did not do much different, but it work in the new file. I had a different problem when trying to use in on text. It was a while ago, so I forget, the exact details. But instead of using the perspective effect from the menu. I ended up using something from another heathenx tutorial: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/blog/ ... pe-effect/

Earlier post with like instructions and such:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1932

EarlyBlake wrote:You could do a live envelope effect. Heathenx's tutorial here: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/episode-060/ where I learned about it. If you only need a trapezoid do this. Draw a box and convert it to a path. Do a combined with that path you want to slant. (Combined is under the path menu.) Select the new path with the and do a cntl A to select all nodes in the new path. Then in Windows hit alt drag one of the boxes corner nodes. If your using lunix heathenx says grab the node then alt drag, but I don't uses linux so dunno. This way you can see the path deform as you move it. The preview in the perspective tool is still a bit iffy in 0.46 anyway. When you have what you want break apart the paths and delete the box. (Break Apart is under the path menu also.)

You will lose any fill attributes to the text if you go the envelop route. And you may have to add nodes to text to get the perspective to really look good. Other then that its a great alternative