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# MS RFC 27: Label Priority

Date

  2007/05/22

Author

  Daniel Morissette

Contact

  dmorissette at mapgears.com

Last Edited

  2007/06/29

Status

  Adopted (2007/05/25) - Implementation completed (2007/07/05)

Version

  MapServer 5.0

## Overview

MapServer 4.10 and older used a last in first out (LIFO) mechanism to plot labels on a map. This resulted in excessive use of ANNOTATION layers to make certain labels more prominent. This RFC introduces a new PRIORITY parameter on the LABEL object to control the order in which labels are rendered.

## Technical Solution

PRIORITY is a new LABEL parameter that takes an integer value between 1 (lowest) and MS_MAX_LABEL_PRIORITY (highest). The default value is 1.

MS_MAX_LABEL_PRIORITY is defined and can be altered in map.h, its default value is 10.

The prioritization is handled by maintaining an array of MS_MAX_LABEL_PRIORITY cache lists in the label cache. When a label is added to the label cache, its priority index is used to decide in which cache list it should be added.

Then at rendering time, we loop through the cache lists, starting with the highest priority list.

Specifying an out of range PRIORITY value inside a map file will result in a parsing error. An out of range value set via MapScript or coming from a shape attribute will be clamped to the min/max values in msAddLabel().

There is no expected impact on performance for using label priorities.

## Support for attribute binding

The PRIORITY parameter can also be bound to an attribute using the attribute bindings mechanism defined in RFC-19. This means two ways to set LABEL PRIORITY:

    ...
    LABEL
      PRIORITY 5
      ...
    END
    ...

or

    ...
    LABEL
      PRIORITY [someattribute]
      ...
    END
    ...

## Modifications to the source code

- PRIORITY will be added to the LABEL object in map.h, in the mapfile parser/writer (mapfile.c) and in MapScript

- A MS_IS_VALID_LABEL_PRIORITY() macro will be defined to validate priority ranges in a consistent way everywhere.

- The label cache code (maplabel.c) will be modified to work with an array of MS_MAX_LABEL_PRIORITY cache lists instead of a single list

- The various msDrawLabelCacheXX() functions will be modified to replace the current loop on cache items with two nested loops: the outer loop will iterate on cache lists (from highest to lowest), and the inner loop will iterate on the cache items inside each list.

- msBindLayerToShape() will be updated to support binding PRIORITY to a shape attribute field.

## MapScript Implications

The labelObj will have a new priority property of type integer.

## Files affected

    map.h
    mapfile.c
    maplabel.c
    maputil.c
    mapgd.c        (msDrawLabelCacheGD)
    mapimagemap.c  (msDrawLabelCacheIM)
    mappdf.c       (msDrawLabelCachePDF)
    mapsvg.c       (msDrawLabelCacheSVG)
    mapswf.c       (msDrawLabelCacheSWF)
    mapagg.cpp     (msDrawLabelCacheAGG)

## Backwards compatibility issues

None.

## Bug ID

- 1619: https://github.com/mapserver/mapserver/issues/1619

- Bug 206 also made mention of label priority but has been closed as duplicate of 1619: https://github.com/mapserver/mapserver/issues/206

## Voting history

Vote completed on 2007-05-25:

+1 from DanielM, SteveW, SteveL, YAssefa, UmbertoN and FrankW

## Questions/Comments from the review period

- Q: Why use an array of cache lists instead of doing a quicksort on all cache entries?

  A: Mainly for performance reason, but it was also pointed out that quicksort is not stable and could result in different orderings depending on the set of labels.