Okay, folks...as an ESRI convert, this one thing is starting to get
annoying.  MapInfo beats Arc8 in 9 out of 10 contests, but in this
particular case, Arc8 is the all-out winner...unless I'm doing something
wrong.

I have a point TAB with 100 points; I set the Autolabel to do its thing, and
it does.  Then, no matter how I zoom in or zoom out, the points and the
labels stay the same size and proportion.  But here's the hard part: I'm
using size 5 points and Arial 5 point text for the labels, so they're
particularly hard to see and manipulate at that tiny size.  If you make a
layout and then zoom in, you can see how they "really" look.

So here's the problem: the autolabel function is somewhat inconsistent in
where it places the labels, so some of them need to be moved around
manually, but with such small labels it's hard to see exactly where the
label landed unless I go back to my zoomed layout to see.  This is a "trial
and error" method that takes entirely too much time.  Arc8 (and even the old
ArcView 3) has a function where you can "lock" the scaling so that when you
zoom in the dots and text get bigger so that you can see what you're doing
with them in the map, instead of having to switch back to the layout.

So, all of you master MapInfo cartographers, how do you manage to manipulate
tiny text labels with precision?

Frank Phillips
Manager of Marketing GIS
Vulcan Materials Company (NYSE:VMC)
Birmingham, AL, USA

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