[mapserver-users] ANNOTATION/TOPONYMY versus LABELS

[Stephen Lime]

To a certain extent yes. With an ANNOTATION layer using a LABELANGLEITEM and LABELSIZEITEM you can control the properties you mention on a label-by-label basis. The intent was to support exactly what you're refering to- pre and well defined annotation. The problem I see is that effort is usually done in support of a single map (i.e. area and scale) and may not translate well to the infinite number of viewing options of a web application, so some tuning of placement (e.g. removing overlaping labels) will undoubtedly be necessary. It's certainly not a bad place to start though.

Note that OGR even goes further allowing use of a STYLEITEM where many CLASS object parameters are held in a single field allowing the ultimate in preprocessing. This is an experimental feature that has not been extended to basic shapefiles, SDE or PostGIS but will be at some point.

I hope I understood the question correctly (had to look up "toponymy").

Steve

Stephen Lime
Data & Applications Manager

Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-297-2937
>>> Paul Ramsey <pramsey at refractions.net> 09/26/01 18:19 PM >>>
Has there been any thought given to supporting explicit annotation? By that I 
mean, textual elements which have specific fixed ground heights, locations, 
rotations. Generally, ANNOTATION is more cartographic, and LABELS are more of 
a GIS thing. But (a) there are lots of organizations out there which have 
toponymy in annotation forms and (b) good annotation really makes a good 
cartographic product.