Dynamic Point Labeling is Strongly PSPACE-Complete

Abstract

An important but strongly NP-hard problem in automated cartography is how to best place textual labels for point features on a static map. We examine the complexity of various generalizations of this problem for dynamic and/or interactive maps. Specifically, we show that it is strongly PSPACE/complete to decide whether there is a smooth dynamic labeling (function from time to static labelings) when the points move, when points are added and removed, or when the user pans, rotates, and/or zooms their view of the points.