[Qgis-user] labels on maps

[Alister Hood]

Yes, the reason it's quite so easy in Mapinfo is because the label location overrides are saved in the project file, not in the layer's attribute fields.  (It isn't so easy to figure out how to unfreeze the label though - the button with the tooltip that just says "label" unfreezes the label location, but the label will remain visible if you switch off automatic labels... and now I seem to have killed Mapinfo...)

It's not like manually arranging labels is _hard_ in QGIS, but if you want it to be slightly more automated you can try the "create labelled layer" plugin.  I guess it might not be too hard to add an option to the plugin so it adds the attribute fields to the original layer, rather than to a copy.

And it turns out I was wrong, you can draw leaders in QGIS, using the "easy custom labelling" plugin.  This is exactly what you want.

But personally I think manually arranging labels is a mug's game, and you can't draw leaders for automatically placed labels (in either QGIS or MapInfo).

BTW, have you actually tried the automatic label placement?  Micha referred to it ("new labelling"), but he didn't explain where to find it.  You may have only tried the "old labelling", which is a tab in the layer properties dialog and doesn't do any collision avoidance.  The separate "new labelling" dialog needs to be opened from a button on the labelling toolbar, or I guess in the menu, Layer>labelling (I'm not certain if that is available for you, as I'm running QGIS master).


> -----Original Message-----
> From: M.E.Dodd [mailto:m.e.dodd at open.ac.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, 2 October 2012 10:24 a.m.
> To: Alister Hood; qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: RE: [Qgis-user] labels on maps
> 
> Doing what I want is easy in mapinfo as you just drag and drop the labels
> individually and the line is automatically generated but I want to do it
> in qgis.
> ________________________________________
> From: Alister Hood [Alister.Hood at synergine.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 10:18 PM
> To: qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: Re: [Qgis-user] labels on maps
> 
> > Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:48:54 +0200
> > From: Micha Silver <micha at arava.co.il>
> > To: "M.E.Dodd" <m.e.dodd at open.ac.uk>
> > Cc: "qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org" <qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Qgis-user] labels on maps
> > Message-ID: <5069BB66.9000403 at arava.co.il>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1255; format=flowed
> >
> > On 10/01/2012 04:40 PM, M.E.Dodd wrote:
> > > converted from rtf
> > > I have a map with lots of point data which I want to label.  When
> > > switching on labels lots of them end up on top of each other as some
> > > of the points are close to each other.  Is there a way of
> > > automatically spacing the labels out to avoid overlap with a line
> > > going to the point from the label. Alternatively a way of doing this
> > > by hand just by dragging each of the labels out of the way but
> > > automatically generating a line showing where the associated point is.
> >
> > You'll want to use the new labeling engine for this. You add, in
> > advance, two columns to your point data attribute table for x
> > displacement and y displacement, and specify these columns in the
> > labeling "Data defined settings" tab. Then you can move each label
> > individually (while the layer has editing enabled), and it's location
> > will be saved to the table.
> 
> Ah, but there's no way of doing what he wants and drawing a line from the
> label to the feature (called a "leader" in CAD), is there?
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