How do I stretch text vertically?

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Pages cannot treat text as an outlined object, like Illustrator can. (Then again, Pages costs less that thirty bucks US, whereas Illustrator is several hundred.)

Do you mean make text bigger, or make it taller while not changing the width? If the latter, then that is indeed stretching, and Keynote can't do that. If the former, in the Fonts panel you can change the font size.

Manually squashing text is a very ugly effect as it distorts the relative horizontal and vertical strokes.

You can not do this directly in Pages which is a bit of a shame, because if done subtly it is one way to fit awkward text.

A way around the limitations in Pages is to create a page which has nothing but the text you want to affect on it and print it to pdf.

+Menu > Print > PDF > Save as PDF…+

Then reimport the pdf of the text which will now act like an object and you can stretch and squeeze it to your hearts content.

You can not do this directly in Pages which is a bit of a shame,

It's not a shame.
It's a perfect choice taking care of intellectual property of the fonts designers.
It's coherent with the decision to don't allow us to build 'faux' styles.

When I see such design choices, I shout: THANK YOU APPLE !

because if done subtly it is one way to fit awkward text.

To do that we may adjust line spacing by point steps or adjust the characters spacing without destroying the characters design.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 30 octobre 2008 12:25:47)

Except Apple did it with their own logo, when they still had one, it was Garamond compressed to 82%.

So Yvan, is it back on your knees, shouting THANK YOU APPLE for being so inconsistent, because it lets you absolutely agree with every contrary thing they do?

When was Apple using Garamond in its logo ?
If I remember well, it was before the delivery of Mac OS X.

They decided to take care of fonts designers when they designed the Mac OS X components.
So, from my point of view, they are consistent.

More about the old logo, are you sure that they didn't ask the designer if he was OK for such a compression.

If some day you decide to learn to read, you will see that I am perfectly able to fight against Apple's choices. If reading my signature is not sufficient, you may read what I wrote about Numbers and the way it treats CSV format or what I wrote about Bentoy which is edited by a 100% Apple's subsidiary !

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 2 novembre 2008 12:28:31)

You change your trousers, and it's not you?

Hmmm, I never looked at it that way.

I changed nothing.

I behaves consistently.
When I feel that something is correctly done, I approve.
When I feel that something is wrongly done, I write what I think.

Before the creation of Mac OS X, Apple allowed us to build "faux" characters. At the same time they used condensed chars in their logo.

It was a coherent behavior applied from 1984 thru 1996 and I disagreed with it.

When Steve Jobs moved back and decided to deliver Mac OS X, with the new staff, Apple made a different choice and no longer allow us to build "faux" characters and no longer use such ones in their Logo. It's a coherent behavior applied since 1997 and I agree with it.

I perfectly know that you are regularly ranting against the switch from Mac OS to Mac OS X which changes your old habits.

I think that it was logical to re-think everything before designing a new operating system. A lot of this rethinking process was already done in the Next company. So, several choices which where applied from 1984 thru 1996 where dropped and new ones where made. Is recognizing than old choices where not the best every twelve years prove to be inconsistent ? I feel that it doesn't.

Since 1997, sometimes, Apple was inconsistent.
(a) after dropping the folder actions which where sadly implemented in Mac OS 9, they reintroduced them in 10.3 if I remember well: I wrote Thank You, but you forgot to make some properties permanent. They correct that with 10.4 and so I wrote: thanks, this time it's OK.

(b) after dropping the file labelling scheme which was correctly implemented in Mac OS 8/9, they re-introduced it in 10.3: I wrote Thank You but it's not finished. At this time the behavior remains the same since 10.3 and I continue to say that it's not finished !

(b) when they deliver 10.4, they dropped the shortcut feature available in the Script menu. I felt that it was sad and wrote that and I hope that the feature will be back one day

My behavior is consistent. Most often I am described as stubborn, obstinate or mulish, you are the first one describing me as a weathercock. I wish to add that the atheist which I am doesn't stay on his knees except in front of my wife 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 2 novembre 2008 18:32:54)

I just receive your comment.

We are numerous to think that the Steve Jobs which returned in 1997 was not exactly the same than the one which was fired in 1985. Twelve years made a difference and if I remember well, Mr. Jobs himself said that in a conference in front of Stanfords's students.
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Message was edited by: KOENIG Yvan

I was referring to Apple. The other one, or is it the same one?

The logo was adopted by Apple when Steve Jobs was first in charge.

So that makes it bad or good? I'm confused, help me here.

btw You entirely miss the point re OSX, as usual. If a car has reliability problems, correcting and improving on them is a good thing. Introducing an entire set of new problems to the vehicle, just so you know the "team" has worked on it, is not.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:
I was referring to Apple. The other one, or is it the same one?

The logo was adopted by Apple when Steve Jobs was first in charge.

I responded in my late message.

btw You entirely miss the point re OSX, as usual. If a car has reliability problems, correcting and improving on them is a good thing. Introducing an entire set of new problems to the vehicle, just so you know the "team" has worked on it, is not.

I miss nothing. You are ranting that Mac OS X has reliability problems but you are the only one which I read writing that. I din't switch to Mac OS X before 10.3 because I thought that it was not a mature operating system.
I adopted 10.3 then 10.4.
I own 10.5 but I don't use it daily for several reasons:

(a) I'm not fond of several interface changes but I may live with them.
(b) I'm very satisfied by the switch from the ASCII era to the Unicode one in every aspects of the operating system but in some of them, are a few drawbacks and these one are annoying for me so, I choose to stay with 10.4.11 hoping that the details will be solved in the next major version.

We all know that if Apple grabs some points in the computer market it's mainly because the operating system is widely recognized as one of the best available at this time (I don't write THE best).

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 2 novembre 2008 19:03:28)

You missed the point yet again.

*Classic Mac OS* had the reliability problems, but it had an extremely intuitive User Interface.

OSX mostly fixed the reliability problems but messed up a great deal of the User Interface (not all, there are elements of OSX that are better) and made using a Mac more difficult than it need have been.

Users fought a hard battle in the early days against the ideologically driven NEXT programmers to save things like MetaData and Labels. These were however the very few victories for users, the rest we got steam rolled.

A great deal of the constant fiddling in each version of OSX (which creates incompatibilities) is on irrelevant and useless cosmetics, like reflecting icons in the Dock.

The point should have been to advance the whole Mac experience, not have change for changes sake.

(b) I'm very satisfied by the switch from the ASCII era to the Unicode one in every aspects of the operating system but in some of them, are a few drawbacks and these one are annoying for me so, I choose to stay with 10.4.11 hoping that the details will be solved in the next major version.

I'm curious what aspects of 10.5's Unicode are particularly annoying for you.

Hello Tom

My main program is and will remain AppleWorks.
When I drive it thru AppleScript, under 10.5, some items are now Unicode strings which AppleWorks is unable to use.
I am forced to use ugly code to translate them in ASCII. I know how to do that but I am reluctant to edit my numerous scripts for this reason.

I know, it may appear as a minor point but I have also my old habits.

I perfectly knows that Unicode is the soluce to numerous problems but I am so acustomed to work with my old friend AppleWorks than I like to play with its limits.

There are also some oddities which I attributed to Unicode but which are not guaranteed to have this source . The more annoying is with choose file which is unable to work with
choose file of type {"com.apple.iwork.numbers.numbers"} (as well as other iWork's type identifiers).

So, as Mac OS 10.4.11 fit my needs, I stay with it.

And, I must add that I am a bit nervous when I see that file icons are larger and larger when GUI item in programs are smaller and smaller 😉

Sometimes I wonder if in an Apple department everybody is short-sighted and if in an other one everybody is hypermetropic. But, don't repeat that, peterbreis would write that I am changing my advice upon Mac OS X 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 2 novembre 2008 21:04:37)

It's a perfect choice taking care of intellectual property of the fonts designers.
It's coherent with the decision to don't allow us to build 'faux' styles.

Yvan, this is kind of a one man's interpretation. As far as I know, neither you nor anyone else has seen any statement by Apple that any care about intellectual property has anything to do with their decision not to allow faux italics or faux bolds.

Neither, as far as I know, has anyone but you made this interpretation - neither in the Mac press or in design circles.

I would be curious to know if you found any reference to back it up.

I know that you think your interpretation makes sense, but without any outside reference corroborating it, it is just a guess.