Military message layer labels

[ChristinaKochan1]

1. Do you support any modifier labels on military messages other than T - Unique Designation? I remember there being at least fields for Additional Information and maybe a few others in the Runtime for WPF, but I can't find any information on that for .NET. If not, I guess the only solution is to add the labels one by one for each graphic using TextSymbols?

2. It seems that the required labels for tactical graphics don't even work. Is that the case? I am looking at the Military Planner app to test out the capabilities of the MessageLayers.

For example, a Restricted Operations Zone should have the identifying label "ROZ" along with T and labels for altitude and date/time, and the only label I seem to be able to add is T, although it doesn't show up on my graphic.

[KeithMacIntyre]

We ended up using a CompositeSymbol and adding the TextSymbols manually.  There's a major issue with updating CompositeSymbols not refreshing in 10.2.6 htough.

[ChristinaKochan1]

We had to do something similar. It just seems like there is not much of a point of having a military symbology renderer if it doesn't have basic functionality. A halfway done feature is practically worthless. We actually have gone to a third party renderer to get what we need for mil symbology since Esri does not seem to have a very strong interest in supporting their military customers' needs.

As far as updating CompositeSymbols, we have had to just reconstruct them when we've had a change made to a property in the symbol since they don't update automatically. Have you spoken with someone at Esri about CompositeSymbols not updating? I just assumed it was designed that way since updating its properties does nothing.

[KeithMacIntyre]

Agreed.  While they have made some improvements to it, we've had to create HQ and TF indicators on our own, as well as grab echelon and mobility indicators and put them in as part of the composite symbols.  The GetSymbolImage function does not return anything other than an unknown image, it would be nice if this returned a fully formed image. 

Which third party tool did you end up using?  We ended up doing a color swap for destroyed symbols, and made transparent for anticipated symbols.  Not an ideal solution, but it works.

The CompositeSymbol issue was listed as a bug in 10.2.6, in my opinion a bug that should have delayed release.  We did not upgrade to 10.2.6 and will wait until this is fixed rather than rewrite our composite symbol code as it works fine in 10.2.5

[ChristinaKochan1]

We are using mil-sym-java as a web service that we use to retrieve our point symbols. It does have the option to return the labels as well, but they are returned as part of the image so it doesn't really look as good. But as far as status, size/mobility, and graphic modifiers go, it gives us a symbol that looks good and is complete. What's even more helpful for us is that it supports 2525B in addition to C because our customer has not moved to C yet.

That's good to know about 10.2.5's CompositeSymbols... Unfortunately for us I would bet that we have gone too far with 10.2.6 to go back since that's what we started developing with.