Labels as text in SVG exports
Today’s post is inspired by a recent thread on the QGIS user mailing list titled “exporting text to Illustrator?”. The issue was that with the introduction of the new labeling system, all labels were exported as paths when creating an SVG. Unnoticed by almost everyone (and huge thanks to Alex Mandel for pointing out!) an option has been added to 2.4 by Larry Shaffer which allows exporting labels as texts again.
To export labels as text, open the Automatic Placement Settings (button in the upper right corner of the label dialog) and uncheck the Draw text as outlines option.
Note that we are also cautioned that
For now the developers recommend you only toggle this option right
before exporting and that you recheck it after.
Alex even recorded a video showcasing the functionality:
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings 
Hey Anita,
Is it working for you? It’s not working for me. The labels come as text, but each letter is it’s own object. I am using 2.6. I am using the composer to save as PDF and SVG and there is a checked option to export labels as outlines and is grayed out, so I can’t uncheck it. Any ideas? Thanks, Horia
It works for me (tested labeling some points) if I change the setting in the Automated Placement Engine settings as shown above. I also get the popup with the grayed out option but it does not affect the result.
I got it now, your answer, “tested labeling some points”, gave me the right idea. I was trying to export road labels placed on curves and they were coming out as individual letters instead of words. With a parallel placement they come out as words, as they should.
Thank you.