Overlap in d3 wordcloud

Question 1

I ended up asking Jason Davies himself and it was actually a pretty simple mistake: You have to specify the text accessor function in the first statement (not only in the "draw" function). It works if you add one line like this:

d3.layout.cloud().size([300, 300])
  .words(data)
  .padding(1)
  .rotate(function(d) { return 0; })
//    .font("Impact")
  .text(function(d) { return d.word; }) // THE SOLUTION
  .fontSize(function(d) { return d.size; })
  .on("end", draw)
  .start();

Question 2

The fix by the author didn't work for me. What did work was to specify the .font() in the cloud layout setup and declare the same font-family in the draw code - so ironically, the bit that the author above has commented out. This gives the code the font to calculate dimensions from. Without it, it takes a best guess.

d3.layout.cloud().size([800, 400])
  .words(words)
  .font('Impact') // <-- what mattered
  .fontSize(d => d.size)
  .on('end', draw)
  .start()

You'll need to also specify the font-family in the draw() function so that the cloud renders the words in the correct font that matches what you declared above :

.attr('font-family', 'Impact')

Question 3

I have tried a sample for you to fiddle with, Please have a look. wordcloud without overlap

essentially:

<div id="cloud"></div> 

// First define your cloud data, using `text` and `size` properties:


var fill = d3.scale.category20();
var words = {
"Battery Related": "52382",
"Billing": "52412",
"Break Related": "52490",
"Chain Related": "52471",
"Clutch Related": "52468",
"Dealer attitude": "52488",
"Electrical Related": "52352",
"Engine Related": "52446",
"Handle Bar Related": "52486",
"Happy": "52472",
"Jerking": "52325",
"Jerking Problem": "52325",
"Low Mileage": "52489",
"Noise": "52462",
"Poor Pickup": "52406",
"Running Off": "52242",
"Service Quality": "52488",
"Silencer Problem": "52468",
"Starting Trouble": "52490",
"Suspension Related": "52365",
"Vehicle Noise": "52467",
"Vibration": "52463",
"Washing": "52488"
};
var max_freq = 52490;
var cloudwords = ["Battery Related", "Billing", "Break Related", "Chain Related", "Clutch Related", "Dealer attitude", "Electrical Related", "Engine Related", "Handle Bar Related", "Happy", "Jerking", "Jerking Problem", "Low Mileage", "Noise", "Poor Pickup", "Running Off", "Service Quality", "Silencer Problem", "Starting Trouble", "Suspension Related", "Vehicle Noise", "Vibration", "Washing"];
var url = 'http://xxx.yyyy.zz.ww/?q=abc/';
var width = 800,
height = 800;

var leaders = cloudwords
.map(function(d) {

return {
  text: d,
  size: 5 + (words[d] / max_freq) * 0.9 * 30 // *the size of the "box" occupied by each word. has no relation to text size.
};
})
 .sort(function(a, b) {
 return d3.descending(a.size, b.size)
});

var leaderScale = d3.scale.linear().range([1, 20]); // *scale range to plot the relative sizes of the words.

leaderScale.domain([d3.min(leaders, function(d) {
return d.size;
}),
d3.max(leaders, function(d) {
return d.size;
})
]);

 // Next you need to use the layout script to calculate the placement, rotation and size of each word:

 d3.layout.cloud().size([width, height])
.words(leaders)
.padding(0) //fiddle with padding here, does not really have any effect    on overlap.
.rotate(function() {
 return ~~0; //to keep the words horizontal 
 })
 .font("Impact")
 .fontSize(function(d) {
 return d.size;
 })
 .on("end", drawCloud)
 .start();

 function drawCloud(words) {
 d3.select("#cloud").append("svg")
 .attr("width", width)
 .attr("height", height)
 .attr("text-align", "center")
 .append("g")
 .attr("transform", "translate(" + [width >> 1, height >> 1] + ")")    //for transalting words to their different postions.
 .selectAll("text")
 .data(words)
 .enter().append("text")
 .style("font-size", function(d) {
  return leaderScale(d.size) + "px"; //used scale to resize words to a linear scale.
 })
 .style("font-family", "Impact")
 .style("fill", function(d, i) {
  return fill(i);
 })
 .attr("text-anchor", "middle")
 .attr("transform", function(d) {
  return "translate(" + [d.x, d.y] + ")rotate(" + d.rotate + ")";
 })
 .text(function(d) {
  return d.text;
 })
 .on("click", function(d, i) {
  window.open(url + d.text);
 });
 }

 // set the viewbox to content bounding box (zooming in on the content, effectively trimming whitespace)

 var svg = document.getElementsByTagName("svg")[0];
 var bbox = svg.getBBox();
 var viewBox = [bbox.x, bbox.y, bbox.width, bbox.height].join(" ");
 svg.setAttribute("viewBox", viewBox);