Ortelius Macintosh Map Making Software by Mapdiva, LLC

One of the most useful features of Ortelius labeling system is the ability to add labels using attribute information from existing map data, such as an imported GIS Shapefile* or from an Ortelius map template.

Labeling using attributes is an advanced feature available in both Standard and Professional editions. These labels are “intelligent” because they automatically use attribute information, such as road names, if that information exists behind the scenes.

Related topic: Working With Feature Attributes

Intelligent labels are placed exactly the same way as free-text labels, without any bulky menus to get in the way. Simply use two percent signs “%%” followed by the attribute identifier as a placeholder for the label’s value. For instance, “%%name” would label the line in the following example as “Market”. Identifiers are not case sensitive (in other words, %%NAME returns the same result as %%Name).

Note: If an attribute identifier contains a space in its name, quotation marks can be used in the attribute tag, e.g., %%”name 2″ will recognize the identifier whereas %%name 2 would interpret only “name” as the identifier.

Concatenation – it’s a long word for something so easy. Creating labels that link together more than one attribute (technically referred to as concatenation) is easily accomplished without complicated expressions. Simply write a statement using the “%%identifier” of the attributes you want in the label, where “%%identifier” is the tag for the attribute value. Use spaces or other standard characters between words just as you would write them naturally. For example, as seen in the Object Inspector, “Name” “Number” and “Type” are different attribute identifiers of the selected line. We use these three attributes for its label by entering “%%number %%name %%type” to have the label read “401 Market Street”.

The Ortelius labeling system is so flexible that you can be very specific with just a few simple-to-remember codes. In the following example, we demonstrate just how easy it is to use only part of an attribute phrase, as well as replacing a label with all uppercase characters.

Open the Object Inspector to see what attributes are available and their Identifier names. Use the %%identifier for intelligent labeling. In this example, the attribute for the road’s condition is used for the label, so we type the attribute identifier “%%Condition” and tag it with “.1, .2, .3” (etc., up to nine), to return the corresponding first, second, or third word in a phrase. Tag with .U for an uppercase, and .L for a lowercase label.

That’s it. Intelligent labeling works the same for point, line, and area labels, and ordinary text objects. A simple, direct method for quick intelligent labeling with maximum flexibility.

Intelligent %% labels and label codes are an advanced feature available in both Standard and Professional editions. Using these easy-to-remember codes keeps labeling simple and direct – and can save time and sanity!

Label styles go hand-in-hand with the map’s styles and symbols. “Using the Style Inspector” describes how to define components of a style, including text adornments. When %%identifier is defined in the content area, labels will look for that information first. To use the underlying style from a Text Adornment as a template for a label, be sure to disable (uncheck) the Text Adornment after defining it.