Animating visible portion of path

Hello,
I have a path object and would like to animate which portion of it is visible (rather than moving an object along the path, extend a line along the path). For example, if I had a long curve path representing a cursive word and wanted to animate it as if it were begin written by a pencil. Not the exact situation, but you get the idea.

Is this possible?

Thanks,
-Jeremy

Hi
there is some very good examples at

http://pilat.free.fr/english/animer

for example this:

http://pilat.free.fr/english/animer/france.htm

hth
Holger

Thanks for the link! What a clever trick. I never would have thought of it.