[GRASSLIST:10541] Re: Labels and ps.map

[Nick Cahill]

Dear Michael,

In d.m and gis.m, there is a radio button for showing labels, you  
choose what column to display and its parameters, left, right, size,  
etc. Does this make a temorary label file for display? I was guessing  
that it was somehow able to draw directly from the database, since  
there is no place to specify a label file. This all seems very  
intuitive; but when printed to postscript, those labels do not appear  
(for me at least; because I don't have ghostscript, perhaps?). So  
I've been working through ps.map; which works fine, but involves the  
extra step of creating a label file. The postscript from ps.map comes  
out as proper editable text, not as a raster, which is important to  
me as I'll need to move the labels around later. Creating the label  
file is not much of a hassle, except that it requires knowing in  
advance how large the labels should be; you can't resize them on the  
fly and immediately see what the results are. I just wondered whether  
a more direct method was in store for the future.

Thanks,

Nick


On Feb 24, 2006, at 6:39 AM, Michael Barton wrote:

> Nick,
>
> Point vector attribute display in d.m and gis.m is done by  
> d.labels--with
> original labels file prepared by v.label (or by hand).
>
> There is a fair amount of control over the display possible.  
> However, the
> labels ultimately are rendered to the screen as rasters. Gis.m can  
> output
> the screen to EPS or a postscript device now (if you have ghostscript
> installed). However, it is output as a postscript bitmap/raster  
> image. If
> you make your map display larger, it might give you higher  
> resolution in the
> final EPS.
>
> Michael
> __________________________________________
> Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
> School of Human Evolution and Social Change
> Arizona State University
> Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
>
> phone: 480-965-6213
> fax: 480-965-7671
> www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton
>
>
>
>> From: Nick Cahill <ndcahill at facstaff.wisc.edu>
>> Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 20:15:03 +0200
>> To: GRASSLIST international <GRASSLIST at baylor.edu>
>> Subject: [GRASSLIST:10492] Labels and ps.map
>>
>> Dear Grass Gurus,
>>
>> Is there a reason why d.m and gis.m can display point vector
>> attributes as labels, but this can't be output to a postscript file;
>> and ps.map has to rely on the - I assume, somewhat outdated - method
>> of using a separate label file? Currently, to get labels to come out
>> correctly in ps.map, I have to run ps.map, look at the postscript
>> output, find that the labels are a bit too big or something, make a
>> whole new label file with different parameters, and start again; and
>> this usually takes a number of iterations. It would be much more
>> convenient (for me at least, as a user) to have site labels be part
>> of vector display within ps.map, so you could have e.g.
>>
>> vpoints vector
>> type point or/and centroid
>> layer # (layer number used with cats/where/sizecol options)
>> cats list of categories (e.g. 1,3,5-7)
>> where SQL where statement like: vlastnik = 'Cimrman'
>> masked [y|n]
>> color color
>> fcolor color
>> **attlabel (attribute column)
>> **attlabelsize (in points or whatever)
>> **font, color, etc.
>>
>>
>> Or am I missing something obvious?
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Nick Cahill
>