Matplotlib Basemap: avoid text overlapping

Question

I am using Matplotlib Basemap to draw a map and points with labels:

map = Basemap(...)

x, y = map(lons, lats)    
for label, xpt, ypt in zip(labels, x, y):
    plt.text(xpt + 10, ypt + 10, label, size=2)

I am getting lots of overlapped labels in dense areas. Is there a way to prevent labels from overlapping?

Don't know of a way out of the box to do it, I do a manual hack of estimating text bounding boxes and then compute overlap onto a pixel grid of previous plotted text, if no overlap is found, I plot the text and add its bounding box rectangle to the pixel grid. — daryl
– daryl, Commented Apr 17, 2017 at 16:36
You could have a look at the answer from this question. Hope it will make sense. — Boorn
– Boorn, Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 12:29

Anant Gupta · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-14 16:09:57Z

2

The only ways I can think of is to

Adjust the distance from which text printing starts ( which you have specified as 10 )
Zoom into the map while showing the labeled points

A crude example for point 2

from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
m = Basemap(width=120000,height=90000,projection='aeqd',
            resolution=None,lat_0=30.,lon_0=80.)
lats=[30.0,30.1,30.2,30.0,30.1,30.2]
lons=[80.0,80.1,80.2,80.3,80.4,80.5]
m.bluemarble()
x, y = m(lons,lats)
labels=['Point1','Point2','Point3','Point4','Point5','Point6']
m.scatter(x,y,10,marker='o',color='k')
for label, xpt, ypt in zip(labels, x, y):
    plt.text(xpt + 10, ypt + 10, label, size=20)
plt.show()

answered Apr 14, 2017 at 16:09

Anant Gupta

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