Property Connections for Label Classes

[jcarlson]

On Symbology, I can connect symbol properties to attributes and even expressions. Love it! As someone whose first experience with GIS software was QGIS, I love a good data-defined override.

Perhaps Q spoiled me, though, because I want data-defined overrides everywhere. Labels, it seems, would be an obvious place for this to happen. A label is already linked to the data source, so why not let me base the rotation, offset, etc on some attribute or expression?

Counter-arguments

1. Using multiple label classes. Possible, but what if the value I want to change is unique to each feature? I'm not going to make 1000 label classes and define the rotation or size on each.
2. Using annotations. Yes, but suppose I'm working with a hosted service from another organization, or I want to keep my work in a shapefile instead of a GDB? An anno FC may be out of the question, or I can't rely on creating a static anno representation of a dynamic layer, and I can't get them feature-linked. And even if I could, I balk at the amount of time I might need to spend tweaking annotation attributes for something that could be a line or two of Arcade.
3. Text formatting tags. These are great, but they only address the font. What about the halo, shadow, and callout? The rotation and offset values? There are plenty of other things on a label class's Symbol tab that I'd love to connect to the source feature's attributes.

[AndreasLorentzen]

This would be usefull. Would also want to se connection to the map (get map rotation, scale, name, etc.)

this is somewhat relevant to:Get rotation of map frame in arcade expression or how to rotate labels accordingly 

[wayfaringrob]

Was surprised to find this missing today. I wanted to make a callout that could match the color of my symbology, but it is impossible in Pro. Thanks for suggesting.

[AlbertC]

I really don't get why, after all these years, ArcGIS still has so much catching up to do with QGIS. Connecting feature attributes to label properties should be a given—you've been able to do this in QGIS since at least version 2.0, released in 2013. More than 10 years ago!

I'm really trying to use ArcGIS Pro more often, but QGIS is simply more flexible. The way I work is that I do pretty much all the processing in ArcGIS, since I trust it more and it has much better documentation than QGIS. However, I simply cannot use ArcGIS to generate maps. QGIS is miles ahead, even after Pro has copied a lot of things from it: blending modes, effects, expressions, symbol property connections... And let's not even talk about the Atlas, which is light years ahead of Map Series.

We need the team at ESRI to start making maps with QGIS to truly understand how much better it is—and to step up their game.