how to show a line cuted off a short piece at begin or end

[roshomon]

In maplibre, is there any way to draw a line that's shorter than its actual length in pixel unit, just like CIMGeometricEffectCut in ArcGIS Maps SDK for js,
Any reply would be greatly appreciated!

[HarelM]

There is the dash-array and line-pattern
See here for example:
https://maplibre.org/maplibre-style-spec/layers/#line-dasharray
Let me know if this is what you were looking for.

[roshomon]

thanks for reply!
just like this

dash-array cannot cut only in begin and end.
Maybe it can do it by calculating line length in screen. For example, the length of a line is 100px, I'll cut 10px in the begin and the end. The line-dasharray is [0,10,80,10]. But it cannot solve so many lines in a layer. Also line-dasharray don't support data expressions

[HarelM]

Will the following feature request solve this issue?

• Implement data-driven styling for line-dash-array #1235

[roshomon]

After a fashion, data-driven styling for line-dasharray paired with calculating line length can solve the problem. However, it will add a lot of work to calculate and store length of every line. If the source data update frequently, it would be even more difficult

[HarelM]

I'm honestly not sure I understand the requirement to be honest from a map designer perspective...

[roshomon]

Actually,the requirement is to show icons with transparent backgrounds at the ends of line. The icons is in a point layer over a line layer. Now the result is

My ideal result is

So is there a good way in MapLibre style?

[HarelM]

Wouldn't it be easier to fill the inside of the icon?

[roshomon]

The icons are drawn dynamically and have many kinds,at the same time I want to keep the transparent background of icon as many icons have no obvious border ,just like this:

so can't fill inside.

[HarelM]

Well this is currently not possible.
You'll need to define a style spec definition and probably implement it if you want it done.
See here:
https://maplibre.org/maplibre-style-spec/layers/
And obliviously the maplibre-style-spec repo.

I would advise to simply create a circle layer as a background to all the icons and continue to the next problem, but that might just be me...

[roshomon]

ok thanks for relay and professional advise. Maybe I should think about the design of line crossing icon is good in geographic map, as the
design inspiration is from electrical connect graph.