ABSTRACT

The interest in algorithms that automatically place labels on maps, graphs or diagrams has increased with the advance in type-setting technology and the amount of information to be visualised. However, though manually labelling a map is estimated to take fifty percent of total map production time (Morrison, 1980), most geographic information systems (GIS) offer only very basic label-placement features. In practice, a GIS user is still forced to invest several hours in order to eliminate manually all label-label and label-feature intersections on a map.