legendqgis
I would like to edit the legend in my map so that the entries of two polygons will appear together, i.e. the two entries in the legend should be displayed appear as "Study area and possible study area" as two elements side by side.
Is there a possibility to group the symbols in such a way?
Study Area and possible study area
_ _ _ _
|_ _| |_ _|
Just for anyone that may still be looking around for an answer to this issue, I havent managed to find a feature within QGIS either... but i have figured an effective way of compensating for the issue.
I simply add an image box into the Print Composer and use an corresponding image (Usually .SVG files) to cover the previous symbol that is too small. I understand its not the best way to get around the issue but its much quicker than creating and duplicating layers.
I hope this helps anyone with similar issues.
I asked Dr. Aileen Buckley, Esri Cartographer for her advice. She wrote a blog post that explains when you should use singular and plural for legend items. I asked, ”Is there a cartographic convention or guideline for legend item labels being singular or plural? Do plural labels imply something different if there are both singular and plural entries?”
In summary;
"As a rule, legend item labels should be singular nouns."...
Also, ”Do plural labels imply something different?”
Yes, they do. The most common interpretation of legend item labels that are plural is that there are multiple things of the same type in a single location."
ArcGIS Blog post "Legend item labels – singular or plural" https://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2016/08/29/legend-item-labels-singular-or-plural/
From her post, this image shows where you should have plural legend entries. One restroom symbol implies multiple restrooms.
Best Answer
Assuming that you wish to do this in a QGIS Print Composer layout, and not the main interface's layer legend (which is currently not possible), here is a layout representation of what you may be looking for:
Note that this legend is comprised of multiple items (not just a basic legend item): background rectangle, title label and two legend items (in stacking order bottom to top). You can have multiple legends in your Composer layout, and you can control whether they have a title, which the two in this layout do not, and what layers are shown.
You will have to manually select the layers you want for each 'column' and synchronize several legend item properties between legend items to get this to work well. Set the Opacity for the background of the legends to 0 and make sure the fonts match between legends.
Couple of notes: whenever you edit certain aspects of a legend item, like showing or hiding layers, the Composer will auto-shrink the legend item's bounding box, which is (mostly) a feature. This may cause problems if you are using anything but the left and top borders of a legend item in an alignment operation.
Basically, with this method, you can have as many 'columns' as you want, but each one requires an initial manual setup. Further maintenance will be required upon adding new layers to your project, as those layers will be auto-added to each legend 'column'. You can turn this behavior off by un-checking the Auto Update option under the Legend Items panel.
There is no function in Composer, as of yet, to auto-create columns.