Advanced legend editor

[PLBoggess]

The legend editor should allow for advance symbolization and manipulation of legend items.  Usefull functions would inlcude the ability to interactively scale and pan the pattern fill of a patch legend item independantly of the location of the legend within the layout, added linked lable examples to the legend symbol so that features with complex labels could be described in the legend, allow for conjuctive legend symbols (marker + patch, multiple patch [1/2 and 1/2] symbols], etc.), and granular editing of "live linked" legend (i.e. no link loss graphic editing).

[AndrewHansford]

It would also nice to have multiline legends as well

[JackCibor]

I would like to be able to add a text box to the legend for free form text addition, perhaps to explain a value.     (I know you can ungroup and then edit, but you must manually keep symbols and text in line) . It would also be nice to have the ability to make layer names in legend take up two lines. Word Wrap function. 

[JackZHANG]

Though it is possible to make multi-line legend text through Legend Description. It would be still quite useful if we can have multi-line legend text directly in Layer Nam, Heading, and Labels

[DanielleKerr]

We would like to be able to add scripted text such as °C/dec. or M³/sec to a legend. You can do this when you edit the symbology label when  using categories but I do not see where you can addd this in when using proportional symbols, for example.
It may be useful to be able to add a scripted text unit of measure to an attribute table and then be able to include the unit of measure in conjunction with the value field when symbolizing the feature. Currently you can not add superscript to an attrubute table I believe.

[TT]

Yesterday on a map I had to make the patches are larger than normal, because that was the only way for them to show the hatching which is quite widely spaced. If there was a way for the patches to always show the hatching, regardless of the spacing, then I wouldn’t have to bother with increasing the patch sizes. This was a problem in ArcMap also and you need to improve your product with an option to scale the symbology in the patch, in a manner decoupled from the hatch spacing in the layer symbology settings, so that the legend is always clear. It is usually not the case that different hatch spacings are used between layers and, for example, the colour is kept the same, so it is not necessary to replicate the hatch spacing in the legend. What is more important is to show the hatch colour and because the legend mindlessly replicates the hatch spacing in its tiny patches, usually they don’t show. I would prefer the standard hatch spacing in the tiny legend patches to be 3-5 points. Then the reader will see plenty of hatches and get a confident read on what to look for on the map. I have been doing GIS for about 10 years and I’m speaking from long experience here of this problem. The work around is to create another layer specifically for the legend with smaller hatch spacing, but do you really want to make you users do this?

[AubriKinghorn]

Thank you everyone who has commented on or kudo-ed this idea!

At this time we are going to close this idea. The guidelines for Ideas (listed here) state that each idea post should only have a single idea. Otherwise it gets really hard to understand which pieces of the idea are most important and figure out what has and hasn't been implemented. With that in mind, this idea will be closed out. Pieces of this idea that are not yet implemented can be added as new ideas and voted on. 

Thanks again!

-Aubri Kinghorn