You’re sitting in a class…..back up – You’re teaching a class and and someone goes “Hey – there’s this QGIS Label Toolbar. How do it work?”.
I’m probably better at making a map than I believe. I really don’t enjoy it because with every map Green was always a problem. “Can you make this green ‘greener’?”. I would get upset and go “OK” and immediately make it too green. Way back in my career I was working on a Spill Plan Prevention Control and Countermeasures map (I think that’s SPCC). This map was all manual back in the day. We had a plan to make it “digital”. So we scanned a photo (and didn’t georeference it) and started laying out ArcINFO Annotation on it. At some point we scanned another map and had to move everything (not georeferenced) again. Then at some point we decided georeferencing the map was a good idea so I had to move all the annotation. Again. Anytime you say “label this feature” I break out in a sweat to this day.
So I sat this weekend with the whole goal of making the QGIS Label Toolbar Active. The best I could do was this:
I finally “Read the Manual” and found that the label toolbar is Attribute based. So if I add some Attributes to my data layer:
- x – decimal number – Length 12 Precision 3
- y – decimal number – Length 12 Precision 3
- rotation – decimal number – Length 12 Precision 3
- visibility – integer – Length 1
…..and then I assign those attributes to the label properties:
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…..and then I edit my layer:
I can now move my labeling all over the place to make a better map. I can turn labels off. I can rotate the labels. Of course I’m not even discussing the Rule based labeling and all the joy you can have there.
Anyway – I left a tutorial I need to clean up a bit over HERE that should at least get you started.
