Awesome! Glad it worked for you!
Any chance the layer could be simply edited from F.Cu to āKeepout areaā in the file? Or is this impossible?
Not directly, but the expanded Gerber standard supports black and white (positive/negative) plotting, so you could plot the text on a separate layers and then instruct the board fab to add as negative to the coppers, or you could manually edit/append the copper Gerber files with the negative header + text.
Doing this, the user (of course) needs to take care to ensure the negative text does not cross any traces 
Not sure how to do this. Does anyone know what layers/objects in KiCAD would create this?
A bit late to the party but here we go:
I see two options.
One option would be to create keepout area(s) from the text. This keepout area(s) can then be placed inside a zone.
The second option is to create a custom pad that is a rectangle on the outside and has the text cut away. (Sadly there is no ānegativeā pad shape so you would need to create a single polygon with the text removed. Have a look at this part of the kicad-footprint-generator for inspiration)
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The lazy solution is to just trace over the text with traces, then it shows as desired.
Edit: Reread the later question, Yes keepout zones set to arbitary slope is a way to accomplish it, little bit annoying, but it functions.
edit: For the āeā at the left end of the horizontal stroke, I went up, traced out the top void, then continued down on the tail
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Keepout areas are zones, filled zones could be converted to keepouts, but not tracks or letters. And text is a simple item with the text string and properties in the file, itās not lines and canāt be converted to something other.
Creating the text only on the Mask layer, while being the copper layer filled behind it, will result almost the desired pattern (without the clearance contour).
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Resurrecting ancient threads so members have to wade through many outdated posts is silly
For new, relevant information, please start a new thread.