Balloon Text Tool

The Balloon Text tool allows you to create a variety of balloon text objects, as shown below:

There are a variety of balloons: circle, oval, rectangle, highway sign shapes, etc. A leader is optional and is created by dragging. The leader may be with or without a leader break. The leader may also be a polygon or smoothed polygon.

The text may consist of one or two lines, each of which may contain a programmable sequence counter for numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, ...), upper-case letters (A, B, C, D, ...) or lower-case letters (a, b, c, d, ...).

You have many choices in the tool's dialog:

You may type the desired text for each line.

The programmable sequence will be between the up-caret (^) characters, and the type of sequencing (numbers, upper-case letters, and lower-case letters) will depend on the first character found within the up-carets symbols. Any characters typed before the first up-caret symbol will be considered the prefix, and any characters typed after the second up-caret symbol will be considered the suffix for that line. For example:

Type	To Produce
^1^	1, 2, 3, ...
­^11^	­11, ­12, ­13, ...
Abc^4^def	Abc4def, Abc5def, ...
Hey^A^	HeyA, HeyB, HeyC, ...
­12^a^	­12a, ­12b, ­12c, ...

Turn off the programmable sequence counter by eliminating the up-caret (^) characters.

Two side notes are provided. These are not available for the text-only choice of 'balloon'. The incremental counter mechanism is not available for side notes.

You can select from a wide variety of balloon shapes. You can also select a single or double bubble, and a plain or split bubble. You have additional choices for default balloon sizes, text clearance, leader breaks and polygon or smooth leader.

To use the tool, just click and drag. If you want the bubble on the left, then just move the mouse to the left until it flips.