It needs these options:

• No Horizontal Deform
• No Vertical Deform
• Proportional Deformation

No Horizontal deform means that any points affected by the envelope can only be displaced vertically. Thus they can't shift side-to-side.

No vertical is the same thing, but points can only move side-to-side, rather than up or down when displaced.

Proportional deformation means that between the opposing bounds of the envelope tool, the gradient of distortion is somewhat more even. Maybe it could have a slider to shift the center-line of such a gradient up or down to control witch edge has more influence on displacement of the points within the envelope?

Case in point, I was following a tutorial for a certain effect, and it has a lot more steps than it would take for other software. It's a very good tutorial as far as current Inkscape goes, but the entire process seems convoluted:

https://youtu.be/ywInKVezX6o

Now if you had the options I'm suggesting available, you could save doing all those steps of manually adjusting each letter. You'd combine the paths for the middle letters. Make a curve for the desired bottom arch shape and copy it to the clipboard. And then path deform with no horizontal distortion and proportional deform done with the envelope bottom in reference to the clipboard path. It'd be bam-bam done in significantly fewer steps and less manual adjustments.

The current implementation of the envelope path effect only arches the characters outwards or results in a distorted mess. It can't be used in a way that I would consider desirable in this instance.

So hopefully my explanation gives a good idea, hopefully such implementation is possible. That would allow for pillow or conforming shapes to opposing sides type effects without bowing outwards.

Thanks for any consideration in advance.

Hi.

Hi. The video shared is a bit dated but useful. I shared several utorials (tips) relating to using Envelope Deformation and a particular useful extension called Bezier Envelope that I used when tweaking text or text characters. A suggestion is to deal with text letters individually than then use them together by unionizing them or grouping them. The tutorials and tips to which I am referring are in the Inkscape forum under "Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials" srea. If you look through them you should find some helpful material. And particular ones about the Bezier Envelope I mentioned. Both its source location and on using it with current Inkscape versions.

Also, perhaps others can join in and offer assistance.

BTW, When using the Envelope and Deformstion extensions built into Unkscape, you can add additional nodes via the Node  Tool to the shown Bend lines... to help you tweak the curvature desired of the path objects being used. Also, there is a Lattice Deformation extension that you might try out.

Have a great day.