[Xastir] Labels in Tiger 2003 shape maps

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 02:03:24PM -0400, a Mr. Richard Feyler of Fort Lee, New Jersey <gdwrbw at ftc-i.net> writes 'Dear Rosanne Rosannadanna':
> How do you change the font, etc for the street names and other labels in 
> the Tiger 2003 Shape files?  The font that is standard is basically 
> unreadable.  I tried the map/configure/map labels font to try a 
> different size, but did not see any change.

Are you using pcre and dbfawk in your build?  If so, there are several different
fonts that are used depending on feature type and zoom level.

For example, major roads like interstate freeways use font size 3, which is 
called "large" in the map->configure->map labels font dialog.  As road
type goes from major to minor, the font size goes down with it, with 0 being
"tiny", 1 being "small", 2 "medium" and 4 "huge"

If you can find a valid font using xfontsel and set the font string in the
dialog to it, you can customize how labels appear in all the zoom levels.

The ones I use here are:

MAPS_LABEL_FONT_TINY:-adobe-helvetica-medium-o-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
MAPS_LABEL_FONT_SMALL:-adobe-helvetica-medium-o-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
MAPS_LABEL_FONT_MEDIUM:-adobe-helvetica-medium-o-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
MAPS_LABEL_FONT_LARGE:-adobe-helvetica-medium-o-normal--18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
MAPS_LABEL_FONT_HUGE:-adobe-helvetica-medium-o-normal--24-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

These differ from the defaults, which are 8, 10, 12, 14, 24 point in that 
order.

I find these to be mostly readable.    Unfortunately, as soon as the labels
are rotated they look horrid.  Bumping up font sizes can help, but sometimes
you just get bigger, horrid text.  Without going to some sort of external
font library (and making it even harder to get xastir going), I don't think
there's a quick solution.
 
-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY     SAR502  DM64ux         http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://www.qsl.net/~km5vy/
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which pass for profound knowledge upon the generality of mankind.
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