Elastic labels around the perimeter of a map

Abstract

In this paper we study the map labeling problem of attaching rectangular labels to points, but with the novelty that our labels are elastic, in the sense that the height and width of each rectangle may vary though we require a fixed area. Our main result is a polynomial time algorithm for the rectangle perimeter labeling problem, where the points to be labeled lie on the boundary of a rectangular map. This problem is likely to be relevant in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) as maps are displayed dynamically on a computer screen using clipping, panning, and zooming.