Label customizations

moehlc

Labels do not offer any fine-grained control over how and where they appear - the available options distill down to just being able to hide or unhide them.   Too often, labels end up too close to each other, wrap when you don't want them, obscure some more desirable part of the map, are hard to read, or are otherwise just not how I want to see them on the map.  Then, when it's printed to PDF, the labels do a little reshuffle (mostly they stop wrapping) and those near the edge of the page end up getting clipped.

Please add the ability to truly control their appearance and position on a map.  If it's too difficult to make that happen for labels that are attached to markers and shapes on the map, then please add a new stand-alone label or textbox type of map object that offers control over the following:

  • Font - Ability to set font style, size, formatting (bold, underline, italic) and color (including background/glow color)
  • Orientation - Similar to the way arrow markers can have their orientation set, do the same for labels so they can be displayed at any angle instead of only horizontal
  • Position - Set a specific coordinate on the map for the label
  • Alignment - Ideally be able to choose to anchor in the center or one of the 4 corners and set to align left/center/right and top/middle/bottom.
  • Scale (a bonus feature) - Be able to set the scale of the text instead of a fixed size so it always fits proportional to other scaled map features.  Perhaps through means of defining a bounding rectangle that the text scales to fit within.
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Comments

3 comments

Date Votes
  • Comment author
    Brett
    • Edited

    You raise good points. It may be a heavy lift, but I can think of a couple of ways to scale it back, programatically, maybe into the realm of the possible. The most straightforward solution would be to let the Print Map / PDF Generator page capture ongoing edits to the map without having to refresh the page and losing all of the carefully placed print boxes for a multi-page PDF. So for example, after printing to PDF you notice certain text labels extend off the map, so you go back and edit those particular labels to be shorter. This would also work well for correcting simple mistakes on the fly, without having to start from scratch on a 15 or 20 page PDF. Better would obviously be if the print generator tool would recognize each page's bounds and automatically justify or shrink the offending text to fit. This is certainly doable, but I think a more dynamic print page that captures ongoing edits (or saves the configuration of your print boxes) would be the top-level priority fix.

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  • Comment author
    Steve

    I like the above suggestions, but I'd like a way to even just increase the font size of the labels on the mobile view, similar to how you can increase the marker icon size.

    Zooming in on a map (mobile app) doesn't increase the label font size. It stays at (I'm guessing) about an 8pt size which is just about unreadable if you're mobile / moving while using the map.

    I also tried increasing the label font size by bumping up the overall device font size under the tablet's accessibility options. It increases all the font sizes in CalTopo EXCEPT for the label size. :)

    1
  • Comment author
    John Bassi

    I too would like to see this ability. 

    I agree far to often do I run into labels bleeding over into one another. I would like to see maybe being able to add a stand alone text box with pointer? This way you can place the box/ pointer in a convenient area.

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