Showing Arc/Info annotations details

[Lowell Filak]

The following message was sent by Gambin Dejan <Dejan.Gambin at PULA.HR> on
Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:51:09 +0100.

> I have successfully shown the Arc/Info annotations and now I have the
> following problem - how can I make my annotations (street names) to
> "follow the street direction". The annotations are shown as point layer
> with labeling so they are all placed horizontally. Where is the "angle"
> stored in Arc/Info annotation coverage? Or the text just has starting
> and ending points and nothing else? Is there any way to solve this
> problem? I have been reading about the labelangleitem parameter (thanks
> to Bart) but it is the item in attribute table that holds the angle and
> this is not my case

Dejan,

The annotation angle in Arc coverages is kept in a psuedo item named
$ANGLE. If you have access to Arcedit you can add an attribute to the
annotation subclass and 'sel all; calc angle = $angle'.
However I don't have any experience with using that attribute in MS for
rotation purposes. We have a sizeable annotation layer that we convert
to a line shapefile, to maintain at least a two-point angle, and then
label the line features without drawing the line work. A sample of the
conversion routine is in the wiki:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PerlMapScriptExamples35ex10

Lowell