Better grid arrangement | Voters

Better grid arrangement

W^2

Sometimes it's possible to see a better form of the map visually, particularly around horizontal and vertical spacing.
I'd like for 
A) the map to be better at spacing
B) ability to move and pin components (and have the un-pinned components adjust around it)

July 16, 2019

Jim Downing

For B) I'd also like to be able to control the vertical position. As an example, I'd like to arrange ['design', 'd3-design], ['style-guide', 'cp-style-guide', 'd3-style-guide'] in horizontal swim lanes. Trying to control them with 'weights' is a bit too empirical and doesn't end up with the visual effect I'm aiming for.

Adam Bouhenguel

Jim Downing: would you prefer a

completely manual

mode? The challenge is balancing the auto layout with fine-grained control.

Jim Downing

Adam Bouhenguel: From my point of view, completely manual would be fine for the situations where I needed it.

Jim Downing

Had another thought about this. I think it might be ideal to set y positioning relative to other nodes. e.g. "above = foo" "level=bar" "below=blat", rather than ever forcing an absolute position. Could the layout logic cope with that as an addition?

Adam Bouhenguel

Jim Downing: yes, i think that would be straightforward to adopt, although this would be the first time that MapScript allows components to reference each other without having a user/need relationship

Adam Bouhenguel

Re: A) Do you have an example of where the map does a bad job of spacing?

Re: B) Are you talking about pinning on the vertical dimension?

Jim Downing

Adam Bouhenguel: One issue I've had with spacing is that the spacing seems to only worry about the nodes, doesn't create space for labels.

Adam Bouhenguel

Jim Downing: yes, you're spot on. "Creating space for labels" is not something that's currently implemented.
In a topographical map the locations of cities and roads are (almost) never moved to make room for labels. Instead the labels are either hidden or kept in areas where there's enough room for them to be legible.
My research into this suggests that either the lines need to no longer be straight, or we need more advanced positioning and layout semantics (e.g. a SAT solver to pick label positions)
What are your thoughts on this?

Jim Downing

Adam Bouhenguel: I don't think people will like curvy lines. Probably better to have smarter label positioning. I remember GMaps had some interesting work on translucency and contrast margins around text too that might help.

For my 2c this is well into 'nice to have' territory compared to controlling vertical positioning.

Adam Bouhenguel

Jim Downing: gotcha. I've got a few computational mapping textbooks I've been studying to figure some of this out. I have some initial ideas that I'm still puzzling through. Understood re: vertical positioning