label priority

[Yewondwossen Assefa]

Jeff,

  Maybe you could sort your shape using the population attribute file 
using the sortshp utility that comes with mapserver. The syntax is 
something like this :
   sortshp [infile] [outfile] [item] [ascending|descending]

  Once sorted (I beleive descending in your case) It should draw first 
the cities with the largest population.

Later,

Jeff Portwine wrote:
> I'm using a shapefile called citiesx020 to show cities in the US, and 
> I'm having a small problem.   In many places cities are very close 
> together.   I have already limited it to cities with population over a 
> certain amount so I don't end up not being able to distinguish points 
> but in certain cases there are sufficiently large cities that I want to 
> show that are close enough together so that their labels collide.   I 
> have a buffer of 5 pixels, so in such cases only one of the cities will 
> show their label, and the other one won't.    In one particular case 
> though I have New York City that is pretty close to Newark, Elizibeth, 
> and Jersey City and I have the label for Elizibeth blocking the label 
> for New York city.    How can I give New York City precedence over the 
> smaller city?
> 
> I have two classes now, one that draws cities with populations over 
> 500,000 and the other with populations of 100,000-499999.   The bigger 
> class draws bigger citiy markers and uses bold names, the smaller pop 
> cities use smaller labels and markers.    I've tried reversing the order 
> the classes appear in the map file, but it didn't change anything... is 
> there any way to accomplish this?
> 
> Thanks!
> -Jeff
> 

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Assefa Yewondwossen
Software Analyst

Email: assefa at dmsolutions.ca
http://www.dmsolutions.ca/

Phone: (613) 565-5056 (ext 14)
Fax:   (613) 565-0925
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