# Manual control over placement of contour labels in pgfplots?

Sometimes the automatic placement of pgfplots's contour labels is not satisfactory. For example, consider this example from the manual (with minor changes),

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat = 1.12}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[domain=-2:2,view={0}{90}]
{exp(0-x^2-y^2)*x};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


which gives

Now I simply change the upper limit of the x-axis to -0.75,

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat = 1.12}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[domain=-2:2,view={0}{90},xmax=-0.75]
{exp(0-x^2-y^2)*x};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


I get

Now the contour label positions coincide with the right y-axis and are therefore invisible. Of course, I could increase xmax and/or lower the value of label distance to get more labels. However, in my real problem (not the above MWE) I cannot increase xmax (it represents the maximum value of the independent variable) and I think in general a smaller number of labels looks better. It seems to me that in this case it would be better if the labels were placed either

1. along y=0 or
2. along the line (-1,1.6) -- (-0.75,0).

Which brings me to my question: Can I specify manually the position of contour labels and if so, how?

(This may seem crazy when using gnuplot to generate the contours, but in general I use my own tool and the contour prepared option, so I could compute the position of the labels quite easily. The angle should also be possible, though perhaps a little more challenging for poorly resolved contour levels.)

\node[align=center,fill=white,inner sep=1pt,font=\tiny,rotate=  46.3] at (axis cs: 0.132129E+01,-0.914058E+00) {0.1};

which I then input into the file with the TikZ/pgfplots commands. The angle can be computed automatically from the slope of the isolines where it intersects the straight line with the labels.
For the example function from the pgfplots manual, this is the result:
In my opinion, this looks better than the automated placement of labels by pgfplots, but it is more interactive and requires the use of the contour prepared option. One thing that is missing is the matching of the color of the contour label to that of the contour itself…