Introducing leader lines into scale-aware consistent labeling

Abstract

Consistently placing annotation labels across map scales often poses a problem due to the restriction of the screen space. This problem becomes further exacerbated when we navigate by arbitrarily zooming in and out of digital maps on mobile devices. In this paper, we introduce leader lines to conventional techniques for scale-aware consistent labeling to accommodate more annotation labels on the map domain while retaining their plausible arrangement. The overall visibility of annotation labels is optimized using genetic algorithms while avoiding their unwanted popping effects and sudden leaps regardless of the change in the map scale. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated by experimental results including comparison with relevant techniques.