Here's something I came up with while working on Christmas card designs a few weeks back. The basic premise is using text objects as a pattern to then fill another object. (As an aside, this effect can also be produced by using the clone function and making clones of your text with the trace function selected in the clone dialogue. I found that to be more resource intensive, but others might prefer it.)
So let's get to it.
1. Here's the source image.
2. Select the bitmap source and do Paths>Trace Bitmap>Colors. I used a total of 4 scans and got this result.

3. Discard the source bitmap and ungroup the trace scan paths. Use the to create your text objects. For this tut I had four scans, each will be filled with a different text object, thus I'll need four bits of text. I'm not very clever so I just went with the names of the colors.
4. Once you've got your text objects done, fill them with your desired color. In this example I selected each scan and assigned the color to the corresponding text object. Then select one text object and do Object>Pattern>Object to Pattern. Repeat for each text object.
5. Now select each trace path and do Fill>Pattern and select the appropriate text pattern. That's it. Here's my final product

and each scan path individually to give you a better idea how it's constructed.
whoops. I did the export wrong for the red and yellows. I'm too lazy to fix it right now, but you get the idea.

Clever idea. I think it's interesting that Trace Bitmap create red and yellow object much larger than they needed to be, but were then obscured by the greens.

Oh, very nice. I like this idea!
As you were describing it, I was picturing in my mind random letters and words, some slanted this way and that. But it's interesting the way you have the words and letters all in straight lines/columns. I just may have to try this! Thanks llog

microUgly wrote:I think it's interesting that Trace Bitmap create red and yellow object much larger than they needed to be, but were then obscured by the greens.

That's one of the "Trace Bitmap" options. "Stack Scans" is ticked by default, and uses the obscuration technique. If you untick it, it attempts to produce non-overlapped versions. The latter is often less successful, though, as you tend to get gaps between the layers.

Thanks for checking it out guys. Brynn, to get a more random filling with the text object I believe you'd have to use the clone technique, which is sadly too resource intensive for my computer. If you only want each layer oriented a different way you could rotate or skew each text object before creating pattern from object.