short curly braces with tikz

Question

Is there a way to get curly braces with tikz which look more like this one?

At the moment I'm using the following to get curly braces:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathreplacing}

\draw[decorate,decoration={brace,amplitude=0.75cm}]  (0,0) -- (1,0);  
\draw[decorate,decoration={brace]  (0,0) -- (1,0);

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

But that results in:

The point is that I need short curly braces with kind of a high amplitude which still look like braces.

Answer 1

Here is a primitive meta-decoration, but it is not as general as the standard brace such as raise,mirror etc. won't work. However, the brace amplitude and other local brace options are passed and would be available as I tried to show below. The new raise amount is controlled with meta-amplitude key.

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathreplacing}

\pgfdeclaremetadecoration{raisedbrace}{initial}{%
\state{initial}[width=\pgfmetadecoratedpathlength]{%
  \decoration{brace}%
  \pgfsetdecorationsegmenttransformation{%
      \pgftransformyshift{\pgfmetadecorationsegmentamplitude}%
  }
  \beforedecoration{
    \pgfpathmoveto{\pgfpointmetadecoratedpathfirst}
    \pgfpathlineto{\pgfpointadd{%
      \pgfpointmetadecoratedpathfirst%
      }{%
      \pgfpointpolar{\pgfdecoratedangle+90}{\pgfmetadecorationsegmentamplitude}%
      }%
    }%
  }%
  \afterdecoration{%
    \pgfpathlineto{\pgfpointmetadecoratedpathlast}%
    \pgfusepath{stroke}
  }
}
}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw[style=help lines] (-1,-1) grid[step=1cm] (3,3);
\draw[decorate,decoration={raisedbrace,amplitude=2mm,meta-amplitude=4mm}]  (0,1) -- (2,2);  
\draw[decorate,decoration={raisedbrace,amplitude=4mm,meta-amplitude=1cm}]  (0,-1) -- (2,-0.5);
\draw[decorate,decoration={raisedbrace,amplitude=1cm,meta-amplitude=5mm}]  (2,3) -- (2,-0.5);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Answer 2

This should help you:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathreplacing}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]
\draw [decorate,decoration={brace,amplitude=10pt},xshift=-4pt,yshift=0pt]
(0.5,0.5) -- (5.0,0.5) node [black,midway,xshift=-0.6cm]
{};
\node at (2.65,1.0) {text};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document} 

The length of the brace can be altered with the values in the \draw command (0.5,0.5) -- (5.0,0.5). Similarly the text position need to be altered.

Update

Varying the amplitude, we get something like this:

Code

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathreplacing}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]
\draw [decorate,decoration={brace,amplitude=14pt},xshift=-4pt,yshift=0pt]
(0.5,0.5) -- (5.0,0.5) node [black,midway,xshift=-0.6cm]
{};
\node at (2.65,1.2) {text};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}