I have various text objects, single words, or phrases. I want to arrange them regularly around a circle, such that the first letter of each word is touching the circle.
The word or phrase should be perpendicular to the tangent at that point.

I can do Edit>Clone>Create tiled clones. But only with one text object, say 'text'.

I thought I could do it like that, then edit the text after. But the text is no longer text, it is an object, and can't be edited as text.

Say I have the words: Text1, Text2, ....... Text6, each word a separate Text Object. How do I get them into a polar array?

Thanks for any tips!

One approach is using a polar grid.
1. Do Extensions>Render>Polar Grid.
2. Select the grid, which will be a group of paths. Ungroup, select all and do Path>Combine.
3. Oh noes!! It turned black. Set the stroke width to 1 (or anything other than zero) and the fill to none. Now you have a single path as your grid.
4. Do Object>Object to Guides. Now you have radial guides on which to place your text objects. You might want to delete the vertical guides to make things easier for snapping purposes.
5. Draw your ellipse centered on the grid.
6. Drag you text objects to the intersection of the ellipse and the grid. Click the text object to bring up the rotation handles and move the rotation center to the point of intersection and rotate until parallel with the guide. Repeat for each object.

Pedroski wrote:I can do Edit>Clone>Create tiled clones. But only with one text object, say 'text'.

I thought I could do it like that, then edit the text after. But the text is no longer text, it is an object, and can't be edited as text.

You can edit the text later, but because the 'Tiled Clones' dialog creates clones (like linked copies of the original), you have to unlink them first from the original to turn them back into independently editable text objects:

Select all clones and use 'Edit > Clone > Unlink Clone'.

Thanx a lot! Great advice! I'll try both methods!

If you know the angle of the spacing this is fairly easy.

Under Inkscape preference, open the Steps page and set the angle desired (default is 7.5 degrees).

drag a horizontal and a vertical guide to intersect where you want the center to be.

For each piece of text, click twice to show the rotation center, then drag the center (holding the ctrl key after clicking to constrain to horizontal moves) out to the left of the text.

With snap on, including having snap to object center on, as well as snap to guides, move the text so the rotation center snaps to the guide intersection.

You can now rotate the text while holding the shift key and it wil snap to the angles specified in the first step.

Rinse and repeat for each piece of text.

-Rob A>