[Qgis-user] data defined labelling field details?

[William Kyngesburye]

On Jan 12, 2011, at 1:53 AM, Marco Hugentobler wrote:

> Hi William
> 
>> - As I noted, data-driven offsets as an alternative to absolute position.
> 
> Data driven offset is available in the new labeling (first entry in data defined 
> properties->position)
> 
That's a distance only.  It needs a direction.

>> - some way to specify in any data-driven setting to use the non-data driven
>> setting, like an invalid or null value.  That is, say for placement, if
>> the data value is NULL or empty use the around/over setting in the
>> Advanced tab.  That way you can let the engine calculate fixed/dynamic
>> settings and override them to fine-tune labelling of specific features.
> 
> This is how it already works. If you add two columns for x/y to your table 
> (with NULL entries), the positions for all labels will be calculated automatic 
> by the PAL label engine. As soon as you start dragging labels around, the 
> position will be insterted to the columns and those entries are treated as 
> data defined position.
> 
As others were quick to point out ;)

I didn't know this.  It would still be nice to have the same behavior (dragging labels around) with relative positions, so the labels move with the features.  But since it's automatic when moving labels, it'll do for now.

Just a quick question - is there a separate tool for moving labels (I can poke around with this later and will probably figure it out)?

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

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