[Qgis-user] Alternative labels on each iteration?

[Nyall Dawson]

On 18 March 2017 at 06:40, Tobias Wendorff
<tobias.wendorff at tu-dortmund.de> wrote:

> Since I've developed a way, how to shorten label the automatic way
> for ArcGIS, Mapnik and Mapserver, I'm missing this feature in QGIS.
> I love working with QGIS and telling other people, how to use it.

Thanks for the clarification - it's hard to read tone over email sometimes :)

I should add... I also would like this feature. In fact, I've already
sketched out a plan to implement it. Basically QGIS' labeling engine
needs a way to register multiple labels for a feature, with a
customised cost for each. The placement engine then needs a concept of
"mutually exclusive" labels - i.e. label candidates where only a
single candidate in the mutually exclusive group can be used in the
final labeling solution. This way multiple approaches could be used to
specify the list of possible alternative labels + their corresponding
cost: this could be via python, via data defined overrides, or just a
simple dropdown "alternative label" combo. Not *huge* changes, but
anything touching on the placement engine brings a certain degree of
complexity just by the nature of that code.

That said, I'm unlikely to take this any further myself unless I get a
complex mapping job which just can't be done without this feature (or
sponsorship). It falls firmly into the "too long to just whip up for
the sake of it, too complex to be an enjoyable coding job just for
coding's sake" category!

Nyall