Is there an equivalent to "disperse markers"?

[johnhtodd]

We have many cities where there are multiple datacenters quite close to each other, or where other markers need to be placed very nearly (but not quite) on top of other markers. This makes seeing multiple datacenters very difficult or impossible if they are quite close, and only a single marker shows up on the map (frankfurt, miami or dallas are examples of this, if you're looking at the standard Quad9 POP locations map - I think there are three Miami locations, invisible until you get close, but even at high zoom level only two are viewable.)

Currently, we treat markers/objects as "the same" if they are the same type and have the same lat/lon by three decimal points of precision. We seem to need to have the opposite of that. When two markers are close enough that they "overlap" or are within a certain number of kilometers of another marker, the "new" marker needs to be placed in a way that does not overlap the existing marker that may be in place. THis needs to be done by the client, since the server may not be keeping state of what it has placed on the map and therefore cannot offset the lat/lon.

There are ways of dynamically representing this, but that's difficult unless the map tools that are being used already support this. I mean "dynamic" in that at a very high zoom level, the markers would not overlap each other on the screen, but they may then appear to be many kilometers apart. As zoom level is increased, the markers continue to not overlap, but their kilometer distance decreases until whatever zoom level is required to show that they are not exactly in the same place. This is not required, but it would be great to use if this is already supported in the map tool.

[johnhtodd]

It seems that objects should be able to be tagged with "disperse_markers" or something similar as a boolean to indicate that their graphic elements should not intersect with existing graphic elements. Randomness is OK to disperse. "disperse_markers" should be false if not specified.

[johnhtodd]

If there is no "dynamic" way of doing this, then newest markers should be placed as close as possible without directly overlapping existing markers. If there is visible text, this may create very weird placement and may make this awkward, but it is what it is. JSON file crafters will need to know that if they place with "disperse_markers" tags that their placements may be strange unless they condense words (or better yet, don't show them.)

If there is a "dynamic" way to indicate multiple markers in the same spot, then this is a whole different story.

[esensar]

I have built something for this in #44
Basically, what it does is takes objects that have this flag, that are too close to each other (configurable via settings) and moves them around by a configured distance, alternating angle as if the items are to be laid out in a circle (the end result is not really a circle, because I am not shifting them from a common middle point, but each item from its original position).

The distance scales with zoom, kind of. I made it reduce distance towards the end of zoom range, because most items should be visible then (some offset is still applied to cover cases like the one you mentioned above).

Let me know if that works for you.

[johnhtodd]

This sounds good - I'll experiment in a week or so when I am back in front of a better console.