[Qgis-user] Enhanced labels in 1.7.0

[Andreas Neumann]

 Andrew,

 Some options (the horizontal and vertical alignment, maybe also 
 rotation) only works after you assigned a x/y coordinate data column. 
 QGIS needs to know from which point it needs to offset and rotate - with 
 automatic labeling this is not defined.

 Andreas

 On Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:21:42 -0000, Andrew Chapman wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback Andreas. I'll try just to use the "ABC" tool 
> from
> now on - I realise that it is still in development, so my comments 
> aren't
> criticism, just trying to understand how the tool is intended to work 
> and
> where its development is at the moment.
> So for a point shapefile, starting with "Label this layer" checked 
> and an
> appropriate attribute selected for "Field with labels", no buffering 
> and "In
> map units" selected, I then get text displayed as I would expect. I 
> can
> change font, colour and size. However, when I start to experiment 
> further,
> things get a little more complicated. If I set the size to zero 
> (limit case
> test) and then "Apply", there are no complaints about the value but 
> the
> on-screen text doesn't change. If I exit the dialog and return, the 
> last
> accepted value has returned, so this would seem to be a very minor 
> bug.
> Playing around the limit, I found that 0.0001 map units works ok, so 
> for my
> metric CRS this equates to a text height of 0.1 mm - I could even 
> zoom in
> from the whole world to labels on individual PCB tracks in my PC at 
> that!
> The next step was using "Data defined settings" with a more realistic 
> range
> of sizes defined by attribute and the placement set as "over point". 
> This
> generally worked as expected, except that the "Label settings->Size" 
> value
> changes the vertical placement of the label, in my case by 
> approximately 0.2
> * value - I had expected this control to do nothing in these 
> circumstances.
> As an aside, I didn't really understand most of the settings on the
> "Advanced" tab, including the difference between "around point" and 
> "over
> point".
> I tried the "Data defined. color" and it worked with the described 
> #rrggbb
> where rr, gg, bb are two hex digits for colour. However, before 
> getting your
> response I tried the simple text string "red". and got red text! It 
> would
> seem that there are also some pre-defined (English only?) colours.
> Bold, italic, underline and strikeout all work as boolean values with 
> Null
> and zero equating to False and (as far a I can see) any other value 
> equating
> to True.
> Font family works ok with any recognised font family name. Any values 
> that
> aren't recognised are ignored and the font family defined on the 
> "Label
> settings" tab is used instead.
> To get buffering to work, it appears that "Buffer" has to be checked 
> on the
> "Label settings" tab to get either normal or data defined buffering. 
> The
> buffer size is shown in mm, although this doesn't relate to the map 
> units
> used (metres in my case). As I zoom in and out, my labels (in map 
> units)
> scale, but the buffer remains constant.
> Buffer colour uses the same format as font colour.
> I didn't try label distance and X & Y coordinates.
> Horizontal and vertical alignments are currently inactive.
> Rotation similarly is inactive. Unless I'm missing something, the 
> only way
> that I can use the rotation attribute in my data is to go back to the 
> old
> style.
>
> Andrew
>
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-- 
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 Andreas Neumann
 Böschacherstrasse 10A
 8624 Grüt (Gossau ZH)
 Switzerland