[mapserver-users] LABEL/LEADER experiences and questions.

[Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul)]

All (and Tb),

Ok, I got the Leaders to work.  But now have a few other questions/comments . . . mostly related to label/leader/feature stacking order and how to control it.  I know that most of the examples are against polygons and my questions are related to Points (and probably some line labeling).

So I can make labels like so :
[cid:image001.png at 01CE6776.6C5F7480]

Questions (I did try a few things before coming up with these questions . . .):

*          It seems that some other Label settings were required to be in place before the Leaders would appear, I can share my experiences here, but is there a known list of what effects what from the LABEL to the LEADER objects in the mapfile?

*          How do I place the Features (green Circles) on the top of the display stack?

*          It's not shown above, but I also tried to build a billboard label, filled background with a border around it.  I could only find a reference in the docs to a 1 pixel buffer being place around the edge of the label.  Is there any way to increase this distance (I would like something like a percentage of text height, but even a hard pixel number would work.

*          Is the Leader line supposed to end at the Center of the label, or along the edge closest to it's feature, if so it would help by having a stacking capability. Being able to put the features and labels on top of the leader with the leader drawn from a point would make these look much better.

Comments on Leader drawing,

*          For the most part the drawing and spreading of labels worked very well.  Other than the leaders sometimes ending in odd spots related to the label (see image) they work very nicely.

*          I couldn't figure out a way to make a OUTLINECOLOR work on a leader,  A couple of other STYLE params didn't seem to have any effect either, the Doc's mentioned STYLE period for control, but I didn't get all STYLE ideas that I tried to display every time.

*          Should there be an option for a minimum distance away from a feature?  I would like to spread the label out further.

*          Should there be an option for forcing a leader to be used for a label.  My application use is for following GPS points on a map, I would like to force a leader with Billboard label, preferably with a multi-line billboard eventually.

Things from this end to possibly contribute back . . . I'm not a C guy, but know a  couple, and one is on the MapServer commit list.  We could work on some of this on this end from the existing capabilities, questions though . . .

*          Is this pushing to much too fast?

*          The Feature stacking part is probably the biggest piece, but I know it would require a CASE eval on a feature basis to accomplish, at least polygon vs other fesatures.

Bobb


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