text labels that adapt their shape to the lines

[hmeleiro]

I don't know if this is an issue but here it goes:

I'm trying to print a map of lines (streets) and want to visualize their labels (street names) in a way that they adapt to the shape of the line. I thought that the along.lines argument in the tm_text() function was going to do the job but it doesn't. I dont know if this is because is not the expected behaviour of along.lines = T or because I'm doing something wrong.

I first did this:

mapa <- tmap_mode(mode = "plot") +  
tm_shape(calles, name = "calles", bbox = b) + 
tm_lines(col = "black", alpha = 0.8) + 
tm_text(text = "NOMBRE", size = 0.6,  col = "black", fontfamily = "Roboto Condensed", along.lines = T, remove.overlap = T, shadow = T, overwrite.lines = T, auto.placement = T)
  
mapa

but got this error: Error: is.list(x) is not TRUE

So I did this, didn't get the error but achieved nothing:

calles <-  readOGR("~/Downloads/900YTOYWDW/call2017.shp")
calles <- calles[calles@data$CMUN == "079",]

mapa <- tmap_mode(mode = "plot") +  
tm_shape(calles, name = "calles", bbox = b) + tm_lines(col = "black", alpha = 0.8) +
tm_shape(calles, name = "nomcalles", bbox = b) + tm_text(text = "NOMBRE", size = 0.6, col = "black", fontfamily = "Roboto Condensed", along.lines = T, remove.overlap = T, shadow = T, overwrite.lines = T, auto.placement = T)

mapa

In the case that this is not the expected behaviour of along.lines, is there a way of achieving this with tmap()?

The shapefile I'm using can be downloaded here.

Thank you very much in advance.
Great package by the way!!

[mtennekes]

Thanks for your question!

First, tmap_mode() should be used separately.

When I run this code

tmap_mode(mode = "plot")
calles2 <- calles[1:10,]
tm_shape(calles2, name = "calles") + 
tm_lines(col = "black", alpha = 0.8) + 
	tm_text(text = "NOMBRE", size = 0.6,  col = "black", fontfamily = "Roboto Condensed", 
        along.lines = T, remove.overlap = T, shadow = T, overwrite.lines = T, auto.placement = T)

I get this map:

The algorithms for these text functions (along lines, remove overlap, and auto placement) are not perfect, but with some tuning you may be able to get satisfying results.

[hmeleiro]

I get the same result using your code. I'll work with this functions to solve it out.

Thank you very much for your response.