Subscribe to this thread
Home - General / All posts - Let's talk about labels for Future
dchall8
1,008 post(s)
#16-Nov-17 14:47

I will formally suggest details about labels, but I thought we could discuss them here first. Here are my initial thoughts.

Ability to left, center, and right justify text both in map labels and in a table.

Ability to kern, scale, and lead text on a map.

Ability to place labels relative to a point (right high, left high, right low, left low, center high, center low).

Ability to "loose fit" a label to a complex line.

Ability to wrap text in a label.

And this may not fit exactly as a label, but more decorative legend, scale, and north arrow choices.

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#16-Nov-17 15:04

How do you feel about other label effects, for example, balloons, lead lines, drop shadows (hard or Gaussian), halos, etc.?

dchall8
1,008 post(s)
#17-Nov-17 15:48

Halos can make the difference between visible and invisible where contrast isn't strong enough between label and background colors. Lead lines only sometimes in cramped locations. In 40 years of making graphical presentations, I've never used shadows, reflections, glowing effects, or soft edges in any project. Rotation is a must. Balloons with lead lines or points can be good.

Mike Pelletier

2,122 post(s)
#17-Nov-17 17:26

The shadowing technique used by QGIS for labels is very nice. I'm hoping Future does labeling like a rock star. While of course we want Future to do everything great by tomorrow, I think labeling is something Manifold should really focus on. Especially great algorithms that jam lots of labels onto a map automatically. Labels could really benefit from Future's speed and the minds at Manifold. It could be another way to separate Manifold from other software for folks not needing the great database stuff. Great labels mean less navigating and clicking to find info on mobile apps and of course faster map making. The coming cartography improvements are exciting and I look forward to the day it surpasses Mfd 8 so I can start using Future regularly.

danb

2,064 post(s)
#17-Nov-17 19:49

https://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/maplex-for-arcgis.pdf

This is a great starting point for labeling capabilities. I would particularly welcome curved core labels i.e. label entirely inside odd shaped polygons following the longest branch of the polygon backbone. I have an example I created with Maplex somewhere. I will try and dig it out and post an image.


Landsystems Ltd ... Know your land | www.landsystems.co.nz

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#18-Nov-17 06:44

This is a great starting point for labeling capabilities.

I like your sense of humor. 29 pages of dense PDF on Maplex, ESRI's magnum opus that encapsulates 40 years of desired labeling options, is probably a bit beyond a "starting point." :-)

I admire Maplex for many reasons, but even ESRI is the first to say it is not for everyone. That's why things like ArcGIS Pro have options to use Maplex or to use a simplified label engine.

Maplex is also only part of the picture, as there are two sides to the labeling coin: formatting and placement. Placement is the decision of what appears and where it appears. Formatting is how it is rendered, with issues such as font, size, orientation, color, effects, accessory graphics, etc.

Beyond that there are two challenges for labeling. The first is by far the hardest: it is creating a default labeling engine which in most cases works well without any user intervention, and which, further, provides a relatively small set of optional settings that users can adjust to allow it to work even better in specific cases.

The second challenge, creating a massive thing full of options like Maplex, actually is easier. That is especially the case since ESRI has thoughtfully provided an illustrated guide for anyone who wants a canonical list of what should be implemented in such an engine.

So... most interesting to hear would be:

Basics: What are the capabilities that you tend to use day in and day out for workmanlike presentations? What is the smallest list of features, in formatting and in placement, that covers that?

Advanced: Taking Maplex as a convenient reference point for placement and taking ArcGIS Pro for formatting, of all those features which of them do you actually use with reasonable frequency?

I want to emphasize that the hard part is not clobbering people with thousands of features and controls. That's easy. The hard part is paring down that list of endless features to the most compact default set.

We want to do that primarily because doing so makes it far easier to learn the product, to remember the product and to operate it in most tasks. If that initial minimum part is done right it is OK to have a second level to access more advanced or less frequently used features.

Mike Pelletier

2,122 post(s)
#20-Nov-17 16:42

A really important capability would be to allow users to manually reposition or adjust formatting on certain labels without upsetting the rest of the automatic labeling, such that if new objects are added the automatic labeling engine keeps working on them. There should be some way to track what was manually adjusted and then reset it to automatic if desired. Should be able to select a group of labels and manually change settings, while keeping automatic labeling going on the rest.

In practice I've found that Maplex often does not label per the designated settings. Meaning there appears to be plenty of room for a label per the user set priorites, yet it does not display. I'm sure the algorithms are complex but I'm hopeful whatever Manifold does implement that the results are what's expected.

Maptext.com does a better job and they have gotten into the mobile app business because there labeling is so good. The user doesn't have to navigate and click so much to see the information.

For a basic set of labeling how about going with Mfd 8 capabilities but fix the things that didn't really work. That would be labels following very curvy lines becoming unreadable, callout line widths not visible, and missing line size gradation 1.5.

For advanced, add abilities of rich text formatting (new lines, change basic formatting within the label), set priority positions in relation to object being labeled and allow labels to be stacked, font size reduced, or label rotation to improve the number of labels displayed. The drop shadow technique is a nice touch but I'd rather have the other things I'm describing.

Also, how about an option to temporarily display labels that are not going to going to be displayed (perhaps transparent or some bright color) and then allow user to select one or more of those labels and mark them for being displayed. Ideally this would work against all other label layers that currently are set with higher priority. In general, the idea is make it fast for users to start with automatic labeling, see how well it works, make modifications easily and without losing the benefits of automatic labeling going forward.

Sloots

678 post(s)
#16-Nov-17 15:34

Ability to automatically adjust labels to prevent overlaps. Preferably using a variety of algoritmes, like the add-in I made (but then beter ;-))

For more info follow the link below


http://www.mppng.nl/manifold/pointlabeler

ColinD

2,081 post(s)
#16-Nov-17 19:05

For legends, ability to format individual words such as placing scientific names in italics.


Aussie Nature Shots

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#17-Nov-17 19:51

... and have those style in one line. HTML <b>synthax</b> is well known now.


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

Sloots

678 post(s)
#18-Nov-17 13:24

In Mfd8 we have to put labels into separate layers to give one set of labels a higher priority than the other. How about using an attribute to handle the priority? E.g. a drawing with a column that contains the population size could be used to give more priority to labels of large cities. Does this make sense or do I have to clarify this further?

For me placement of labels if more important than fancy formatting.


http://www.mppng.nl/manifold/pointlabeler

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#18-Nov-17 14:20

For me flexibility of placement is very important. I.e. I have no hope that automatic placement will ever meet my needs. I need callouts and I would like to be able to manually adjust both ends, the label and the startposition of the callout for instance in an area. In Mfd8 I achieve this with a label points drawing but I need an additional step of spacial overlay from area to label point to let changes in area attributes appear as label text.

I need multiline labels (i.e. <newline> as one of the inline formating codes) and a label style with wordwrap of text in a fully customizable box - including an invisible box just as frame for the text.


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

antoniocarlos

609 post(s)
#18-Nov-17 14:28

My thoughts are that lables on the map component as currently implemented are OK. I would love to see more flexibility regarding formating but the placement engine is adequate (not Maplex complexity). Label size should include a form where the user could insert the exact size (2.15 pt) for example. Also the distance between letters should also include an insert form (1.3 pt). There was an annoying thing with rendering where some letters had horns that I think was a Microsoft issue but I hope it gets fixed in 9. The halo feature is useful to me was well as the callouts. Again I would like to see more flexibility to their implementation. (Select halo size color ect) select callout line color size. It would be nice to have the ability to add local symbology for say roads or parks. Offset should be available on a per label

Layouts in manifold have served me well over the years but these have required the installation of a large format plotter. Ideally Manifold could provide an "infinite paper surface" as a work space to use a the output map. Labeling here would use paper rules and would simulate as best as possible the printed output. As a work surface this would mean that the space outside of the paper (whatever dimensions it may have) would still be useful for organizing sets of components for the map such as the legend, large annotations or smaller map component such as an overview map.

I think labeling in the layout could include more "artistic" features like halos, 3D fonts, transparency and others.

It would be ideal for me to improve readability of text that was placed on the map component but now viewed on the layout component requires change without having to switch to the map to fix the issue. (this could some sort of toggle).

Cheers


How soon?

mikedufty

871 post(s)
#20-Nov-17 02:11

Leaders that are actually visible when printed, unlike the hairline ones in M8 would be really good.

Manifold User Community Use Agreement Copyright (C) 2007-2021 Manifold Software Limited. All rights reserved.