[Xastir] Tiger Data map labels ?

[Jason Winningham]

On May 17, 2005, at 9:41 AM, William McKeehan wrote:

> Is there any way to improve the display of road names in Xastir? I 
> have a hard
> time reading what I have now, which should be the default dbfawk.

Shapefile labels are a weakness in xastir.  Rotated text frequently 
looks somewhere between bad and unreadable.

Here's a typical X font identifier, as found in map -> configure -> map 
labels font:

-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--10-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

The part you care most about are the -r- and the -10-.  The r is for 
"regular" text, as opposed to o for "oblique", aka italics.  the only 
thing worse than a rotated label is a rotated label in italics.  The 
"o" was a default at one time, and if your xastir config file is old 
enough you may still have an "o".  If so, change it to r.

The 10 is the font size, in points.  Play with this number until you 
get labels that suit you.  Note that there are particular sizes 
provided, and if you pick an in-between size you may get unexpected 
results.  Right now I can't remember if X just picks the closest 
available, or if it tries to scale it (and butchers the text). Try 
sizes 10, 12, 14, 18, 24, etc.  I have found I generally like one or 
two sizes bigger on my laptop than on my desktop due to resolution 
differences.  e.g., "tiny" is 10pt on my desktop, but 12pt or 14pt on 
my laptop.

X has lots of other fonts available, too. You can use the xfontsel tool 
to see what a particular font will look like.  xastir will kick that 
tool off for you. xfontsel can also tell you the exact sizes that are 
available. I have browsed the X fonts and haven't fond anything that 
looks better than the default to me; YMMV.

You can also edit the dbfawk and change the font_size used for labels.  
IIRC, fonts in the dbfawk are numbers 0 - 4, corresponding to the fonts 
tiny - huge in the map labels font dialog. If you want to dig into 
dbfawks, you can get a lot more control over how your map is drawn.

-Jason
kg4wsv