# Diagonal upright text in tikz

I wish to label a diagonal line in Tikz so that the text runs diagonally yet is upright. My use case is just a row of small 1's for a triangular matrix, but something flexible is preferred. Something like just drawing a dashed line, but instead of dashes or dots its small 1's/numbers/letters that are upright.

I would think that this has been done before, but my google kungfu didn't manage it.

• Welcome to TeX SE! Please add a small, compilable document which can form the basis of a solution. (A Minimum Working Example or MWE.) This makes it a lot easier (and more fun) for people to help you! – cfr Oct 27 '14 at 19:38

Do you mean something like this:

## Code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw [-latex, blue, ultra thick] (0,0) -- (20:2.5cm);
\foreach \x in {1,...,10} {
\node  [above] at (20:0.2*\x cm) {1};
}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


I found I needed more control than Peter Grill's answer (which did what I asked), so I'm just leaving this here for others. It requires the decorations tikz option.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.marking}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node (a) at (0,0) {A};
\node (b) at (2,2) {B};

\path [postaction = {decorate, decoration =
{markings, mark = between positions 0.0 and 1 step 0.2 with
{\node[font=\tiny]{1};}}}] (a) -- (b)
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}