[Tex/LaTex] Curved text within a curved arrow

tikz-arrowstikz-pgf

I am trying to get the text that I place inside a curved arrow to curve with the arrow. I have the following code that generates that given picture, but I wonder how I can get the text to curve with the arrow. I have found a solution proposal here, but I could not adapt it to my case. In particular, I would really like to get the definition of vecArrow to be modified to do what I want (ideally with the text as an argument). Any help would be appreciated.

\documentclass[table,xcolor=pdftex,dvipsnames]{beamer}

\usepackage{tikz}

\usetikzlibrary{arrows,shapes,snakes,positioning,decorations.text,decorations.pathmorphing,decorations.markings}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
   \frametitle{Curved Arrow}
 \tikzset{
vecArrow/.style={
  line width=3ex,
  decoration={markings,mark=at position
   1 with {\arrow[scale=2, blue!20!white]{triangle 60}}},
    blue!20!white,
  shorten >= 32pt,
  line width=4pt,
  preaction = {decorate},
  postaction = {draw=blue!20!white,line width=3ex, shorten >= 30pt}
  }
}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\node[rectangle,draw,minimum width=2in, minimum height=1in] (box1) {};
\node[rectangle,draw,minimum width=2in, minimum height=1.5in,below right=of box1] (box2) {};
\draw[vecArrow]  (box1.east) to[in=135,out=45] node[black,rotate=-47,anchor=west,xshift=-6mm]{\scriptsize Subgraph Match} (box2.north);

\end{tikzpicture}

\end{frame}
\end{document}

enter image description here

Best Answer

Here is one way to do it:

\documentclass[table,xcolor=pdftex,dvipsnames]{beamer}

\usepackage{tikz}

\usetikzlibrary{arrows.meta,bending,positioning,decorations.text}

\begin{document}
  \tikzset{
    vecArrow/.style={
      draw, line width=3ex, blue!20!white, -{Triangle[bend, angle=60:1pt 2]}, shorten >=6pt, postaction=decorate, decoration={text along path, text color=black, text align=center, text={|\scriptsize|#1 ||}}
    }
  }
  \begin{frame}
    \frametitle{Curved Arrow}
    \begin{tikzpicture}
      \node[rectangle,draw,minimum width=2in, minimum height=1in] (box1) {};
      \node[rectangle,draw,minimum width=2in, minimum height=1.5in,below right=of box1] (box2) {};
      \path [vecArrow=Subgraph Match] (box1.east) to[in=135,out=45] (box2.north);
    \end{tikzpicture}
  \end{frame}
\end{document}

Text on curved arrow

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Rotate a node but not its content: the case of the ellipse decoration

The source of the difficulty is that ellipses are constructed in a particular way in TikZ. They are paths that start from the x-axis and proceed counter-clockwise around their centre. The vast majority of the time, the exact parametrisation doesn't matter. You appear to have found the one situation where it does!

In the actual question, you only want to be able to mirror the ellipse, and so draw it starting from the negative x-axis (the title of the question suggests a more flexible approach). That's actually not too hard since we can exploit the symmetry of the ellipse. The key is to provide it with a negative x-radius, since then it will start from the negative x-axis (and proceed clockwise, but we could correct for that by negating the y-radius as well). To do this, we interrupt the call from the node shape to the drawing command and flip the sign of the x-radius. The simplest way to do this is to redefine the \pgfpathellipse macro to do the negation and then call the original macro. The following code does this.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations,shapes,decorations.markings}
\makeatletter
\let\origpgfpathellipse=\pgfpathellipse
\def\revpgfpathellipse#1#2#3{%
  #2%
  \pgf@xa=-\pgf@x
  \origpgfpathellipse{#1}{\pgfqpoint{\pgf@xa}{0pt}}{#3}}
\makeatother

\tikzset{
  reversed ellipse/.style={
    ellipse,
    reverse the ellipse%
  },
  reverse the ellipse/.code={
    \let\pgfpathellipse=\revpgfpathellipse
  }
}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node[ellipse,
  draw,
  postaction={
    decorate,
    decoration={
      markings,
      mark=at position 1 with {
        \arrow[line width=5pt,blue]{>}
      }
    }
  }
] at (0,0) {hello world};

\node[reversed ellipse,
  draw,
  postaction={
    decorate,
    decoration={
      markings,
      mark=at position 1 with {
        \arrow[line width=5pt,blue]{>}
      }
    }
  }
] at (0,-2) {hello world};
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Here's the result:

rotated ellipse

(the arrow got clipped, but you can see where it lies)

[Tex/LaTex] Curved text (on multiple lines) within curved arrow using tikz

TikZ is trying hard but text decorations are not really perfect as the text is decomposed into individual letters and spaces then boxed and rotated. So in general it needs further tweaks to make it look good. The main obstacle is the large arrowhead that changes the bending of the path to fit the arrowhead so the path needs to be adjusted manually. Here is a quick demo but I would recommend different paths for each line to be placed.

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.text}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[mypostaction/.style 2 args={
                         decoration={
                              text align={
                                    left indent=#1},
                                    text along path, 
                                    text={#2}
                                    },
                           decorate
                        }
                    ]
  \coordinate (specRoot) at (-10,0);
  \coordinate (testTreeRoot) at (0,0);
  \draw[-latex, blue!20!white, line width=5ex]  (specRoot) to[in=135,out=45] (testTreeRoot);

  \path [postaction={mypostaction={1cm}{traverse part of the STS}},
         postaction={mypostaction={1cm}{and heuristically choose the best test tree},
         /pgf/decoration/raise=-3mm}]
    (specRoot) to [in=120,out=45] (testTreeRoot);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

enter image description here

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Rotate a node but not its content: the case of the ellipse decoration

[Tex/LaTex] Curved text (on multiple lines) within curved arrow using tikz

Related Question