Hi Darrin. This problem is most likely due to a bug in the label position calculations within MapInfo. Eric Blasenheim, MapInfo Software Architect, explained the problem and its workarounds in a post to Mapinfo-L years ago, which I have quoted below.
I have been experiencing the same issue for years. It shows up mainly when putting highway numbers inside highway shields (any slight error in alignment is glaringly obvious), but also when labeling points on large plots. Bottom line: zoom in really tight (800%) on your layout, go back to the mapper, turn the labels off, turn them back on, and return to the layout. All should be well. They need to fix this. Tim Nuteson Target Corporation [From Eric Blasenheim]: It is not entirely clear to me that all the recent questions on label plotting all relate to the same issue. Some may be a result of misunderstanding how dynamic labels are composed. In particular, many people still think that labels in the Layout are supposed to be the same as those in the Map window. This is not correct. The labels, which are always sized using paper (Points) units, fit differently in the Layout paper space than they do in the Map Window which has only the screen connection. However, there is a bug in the layout label calculation that may be the source of a number of these inquiries. There is also a workaround until that bug is fixed. When the labels are composed, their location is determined by translating the label location of the object (usually the centroid) from geographic units into a location on the page. This location is then adjusted according to the nine label positioning and offset options and the text size which is determined by querying the operating system (Windows). Once these labels are located only changes in the label settings for that layer, the scale of the map or the size of the layout frame will cause the labels to be recomposed. A simple zoom change in the layout, will not cause this. It only changes the display size of all the labels. This is how it should be. However, when the screen display size of the labels is quite small, the conversions between geographic, screen and paper locations result in loss of precision resulting in the labels not being correctly located. Basically we are querying Windows with user point sizes (8, 10, 12 point) scaled down to 1 or 2 points. This commonly occurs with large size plots and/or small screen resolutions where a view which encompasses the entire layout results in very small on screen text sizes. The workaround is to force MapInfo Professional to recompose the labels when the screen size of the text is more reasonable. So, if you zoom in to the layout to where the text is readable and do any of the following the labels should recompose correctly: 1) Change any setting in the label settings dialog or the check box for dynamic label visibility at the first level of layer control. Obviously, if you choose to turn off visibility you will need to turn it back on again. 2) Run any of the MapBasic "Set Map Layer Label" commands from the MapBasic window. These are the same commands generated by the Layer control/Label settings dialogs. 3) Change any of the zoom/scale settings in the Change View dialog or the MapBasic commands that they generate. 4) Change the size of the Layout frame where the Map is contained via the Frame dialog or by dragging the frame corner or side. Also note that any workspaces that you save can automatically use this workaround by saving them at a Layout zoom where the text size is not too small! Opening the workspace causes the layout frames including the labels to be recomposed from scratch and if the viewed text size is reasonable, the correct calculations will occur. We are looking into a fix for this problem. Eric Blasenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] [end of quote] -----Original Message----- From: Darrin Clement [mailto:darrin@;maponics.com] Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 4:14 PM To: Mapinfo-L Subject: MI-L point labels - losing alignment Hello everyone, We have been seeing a very perplexing anomaly for a long time and it is getting too hard to deal with. Here's a brief summary: We have a point layer (which we happen to style using symbols) which we also autolabel. For small layouts (~8.5x11 inches), the labels appear perfectly on the points as we set in the label options to be centered. However, when we get to larger layouts (~3'x4'), *sometimes* the labels get randomly off center. I say "random" because some are to the left, some under, some over, etc. I say "sometimes" because for the exact same data and workspaces, we can sometimes fix this by turning off other layers. However, we try the same "fix" on the next map, and it doesn't work. We can't figure out why the labels don't snap to the points they are supposed to be labeling. We've tried it using both custom symbols and standard symbols for the points, and we've tried different font sizes, etc. We have also made sure that zoom layering is off for the points and labels. Does anyone have any advice? Thanks! Darrin --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 3671 --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 3672
