# Draw relative to right end of node

I'm new to tikz and I guess this is a very easy problem. Still I couldn't find the solution.

I want to use tikz to draw a background for my headlines. Therefore I created the following command:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}

\newcommand{\headline}[1]{%
\begin{tikzpicture}
\fill[gray] (0,2mm) -- (5mm-2mm,2mm) -- (5mm,0) -- (2mm,0) -- (0,2mm);
\node (A) at (12mm,1mm) {\Large\textsc{#1}};
\fill[gray] (A.east|-0,2mm) -- (\textwidth-2mm,2mm) -- (\textwidth,0) -- (A.east|-0,0) -- (A.east|-0,0);
\end{tikzpicture}%
}

\begin{document}
\headline{test}
\end{document}


The result is the following:

But I want the left bottom corner of the second line behind the text also to be cut off. Like in this image:

I tried to somehow add the missing 2mm but I didn't find a solution. I tried ([xshift=2mm]A.east|-0,2mm), (A.east|-0+2mm,2mm), \fill[gray] let \p{A}=(A) in (A.east|-0,2mm) -- (\textwidth-2mm,2mm) -- (\textwidth,0) -- (\x{A}+2mm,0) -- (A.east|-0,0); and many other things I came across when searching. But I didn't get it to work.

How do I add the missing 2mm relative to the end of the node?

## 1 Answer

Use the tikz-library calc to calculate the missing coordinate as ($(A.east|-0,0)+(2mm,0)$).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}

\newcommand{\headline}[1]{%
\begin{tikzpicture}
\fill[gray] (0,2mm) -- (5mm-2mm,2mm) -- (5mm,0) -- (2mm,0) -- cycle;
\node (A) at (12mm,1mm) {\Large\textsc{#1}};
\fill[gray] (A.east|-0,2mm) -- (\textwidth-2mm,2mm) -- (\textwidth,0) -- ($(A.east|-0,0)+(2mm,0)$) -- cycle;
\end{tikzpicture}%
}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\headline{test}
\end{document}

• Works perfectly, thank you. Also thank you for cycle. Just one more question: Why/When do I need the $ signs? – miile7 Jan 30 at 15:48 • @miile7 The $ signs indicate that the calc library is to be used for coordinate calculations (in our case, addition). For details, see section 13.5 Coordinate Calculations of the tikz manual. – gernot Jan 30 at 15:54