Thanks to respondents - SRG (Raghavendran.S) and Richard Nicoll, from GISLIST; and Mike Osbourn, Jon Gramm, Mark Neuhaus, and Martin Higham from the MapInfo-L list.
This concerns MapInfo text labels - I perhaps misled people with the statement that text in MapIno .TAB (etc) cannot be retained as text in ESRI .SHP (etc), when translated by the Sage Universal Translator (FME) tool. It was suggested that an alternative option to using attributes and labelling would be to convert the TAB file into DXF, which retains text. However, DXF format has some deficiencies that are unwanted. Another suggestion was to use the full version of FME from Sage, rather than the cut-down "Universal Translator" (UT) supplied with MapInfo versions. I'm using UT version 20010330 - Build 480a. A further suggestion was to use UT to convert MapInfo .TAB files to the E00 (ESRI ArcInfo Export format). That's not an option, simply because Canvas GIS can only read the SHP format (and a few others) - not E00. Besides, the UT (Build 480a) doesn't understand the Australian datum AGD84 (and has some other problems). Perhaps the best approach is that suggested by Martin Higham, and also by SRG - 1. Add the text string to a column of the table in MapInfo 2. Convert the text object to a point at the centre (or top left, etc) of the text object 3. Convert to .SHP using the Universal Translator 4. Software reading the .SHP can then label with the text column 5. Re-position the labels as required. As Martin Higham suggested, UT does step 2. I think it uses the exact centre of the text object, but since that's really an aesthetic or design aspect of the finished product (positions of labels, with respect to the object they're labelling), it's a art of steps 4 and 5. Thanks to all. IL Thomas --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 11536
