labels overlapping points

[Keith Sibson]

Hi,

I'm using a map of the world with several mutually exclusive layer sets at
different zoom levels that represent different levels of detail. Anyway,
when zooming in, I increase the size of POINT symbols (circles) that
represent cities so that at the maximum zoom, city features are quite
large (20-30 pixels). At the highest levels of zoom there is also the most
amount of clutter on the screen - lots of labelled feature points. What
happens is that labels are not rendered if they interfere with the city
points, even if I FORCE them.

Is this the implemented behavior wrt symbols or am I doing something
wrong? 

If it's implemented this way, then one workaround might be to create a
polygon shapefile for cities rather than use symbols. Would this work?

Thanks,

Keith.