Label with substring of metadata

[Fawcett, David]

Adding another column to the shapefile .dbf and populating it with the
string that you want to use as the label is the cleanest way to do it.  

You should be able to do this with any .dbf editor.  Just don't change
the order of the rows or add any rows.  This will likely corrupt your
shapefile.  

If it works with shp2img, your method is working with MapServer.  Could
it be that Ka-Map is pulling tiles from a cache and not creating them
off of the new data?

David.

-----Original Message-----
From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
Behalf Of David Isaacson
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 10:58 PM
To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] Label with substring of metadata


Hi,
I want to label my map with a substring of the metadata.  I've got a 
freeway map, and all of the freeways are labeled as "Interstate 5" and 
"US Highway 6".  I just want the number.

Is this possible?

I thought I might try to add that data to the .dbf file, using Excel.  
And it works using shp2img, but when I use ka-map to create an 
interactive map no roads are drawn at all (and no error messages are 
given either).  So what the hell is going on?

What's the right way to add metadata to a shapefile (assume I can't 
afford to buy ArcGIS)?  And is there an easier way to do this whole 
labeling thing?  Thanks.

David