With ImageMagick-6.2.2.0-1.fc3 command "montage -label a in1.jpg -label b in2.jpg out.jpg" creates an image with no labels at all. With ImageMagick of the previous FC3 update, every thumbnail had the last given label. Before that, labels worked right.
I've experienced the same problem. I also tried adding a pointsize option in addition to see if it made any difference, but it didn't. In addition, the ImageMagick and component program man pages have very little useful information. You are instructed to do "progr_name" -help, which lists the options but it otherwise not very helpful. Info gives you the same information as the web page. Moreover, I couldn't find any information on the ImageMagick webpage. At least some other options like -flip still work.
I've fiddled with the debug option and spent a little time looking at the code. I think montage may not be parsing the command line correctly and it may just be losing the label. But this is really just a guess. I hope this problem will be addressed soon since I use montage regularly in my workflow.
The problem appears to be fixed in ImagageMagick 6.2.2.-4. I downloaded and installed the rpm package, which is indicated as being for Fedora Core 3. the only problem I encountered is that rpm seemed to think the current FC3 version was newer although it wasn't, so I had to use the --oldpackage option. I'm not sure why this is taking so long.
6.2.2-4 doesn't seem to fix the issue for me.
I used the command montage -label xxxx im1.jpg x.png Then display x.png shows me im1.jpg with the label xxxx It also works with my shell script which uses montage -label %f *.jpg /d/index/$1.png $1 an argument to the script. This takes all the files *.jpg in the current directories, puts them in a montage file with file names as labels. Just what goes wrong for you? But display -label name image_file still doesn't add the label to the displayed image. I don't know if it is supposed to or not.
Fedora Core 3 is now maintained by the Fedora Legacy project for security updates only. If this problem is a security issue, please reopen and reassign to the Fedora Legacy product. If it is not a security issue and hasn't been resolved in the current FC5 updates or in the FC6 test release, reopen and change the version to match. Thank you!