[OSM-talk] Label Placement Survery

[Augustus Kling]

Hello all,

I'm currently trying to do automatic label placement for maps. I'd be pleased to
hear your option about some sample renderings.
Note: The survey is just about label placement, not about the other parts of the
maps' style.

Please fill out a short survey (about 3 minutes) and express your opinion:
http://www.youthencounter.eu/label-placement/survey-english.php

If you're interested I'm happy to provide the algorithm in use (probably in the
end of September).

After publishing the survey in the German OSM forum, I've received a few
comments. The following paragraphs should clarify most of the arising questions:
The absolute scale is used by intention to see if different people have the same
idea about what “good” means. The main intention is to determine if some errors
are more tolerated than others. This is because different algorithms tend to
create different errors.
The images are containing label placement errors by intention – I'm not trying
to present exceptionally good maps in the questionnaire.

Obviously, it would be better to have more images rated (with background, only
labels, varying feature density, …). I'm really grateful for you spending some
of your time rating the images, thus I don't want to take more of your time than
absolutely necessary. Therefore only a few images are presented.

There is no plan to create renderings that are suitable for all scenarios. The
survey is about clarifying how labels need to be shifted around to allow
correlation of labels with point and area like features. For line like feature
its about finding a good place along the line that allows reading the text.
Furthermore it is interesting to see how much information can be presented
before the maps start to look cluttered.
As soon as the algorithm is able to solve this issues and the complexity of
label placement, it shall be used to render smaller OSM files locally
(comparable to the cases where Osmarender is used – except for tiles at home).

Kind regards
Augustus