[geos-devel] Difference operation not always working as expected

[Kevin Weller]

All,

Hopefully it's not merely due to my own idiocy, but I'm experiencing  
some weird results from difference and snap operations that may or may  
not imply GEOS3 bugs.  I'm using the latest and greatest from trunk.   
Here's what I'm trying to do:

I've got a smaller polygon (which I call the negating polygon) which  
partially covers a larger polygon (which I call the primary polygon).   
The negating polygon is always flush with one side or corner of the  
primary polygon.  The goal is to subtract the negating polygon from  
the primary polygon such that there is a resulting "notch" in the  
primary.  You can see an example of this actually working by looking  
at http://www.asapwebsoft.com/files/working_primary_and_negating_plot.png 
  and http://www.asapwebsoft.com/files/working_result_plot.png

Sometimes, with only slightly different input (in this case, I move  
the negating polygon to the East), it doesn't work.  See http://www.asapwebsoft.com/files/broken_primary_and_negating_plot.png 
  and http://www.asapwebsoft.com/files/broken_result_plot.png  
(interior ring not shown on the plot, but I've checked, and it's there)

In the latter case, instead of a notch in the resulting polygon, I get  
an interior ring (hole), even though the negating polygon is as close  
to overlapping as I can get it.  I've even tried using the  
GeometrySnapper to snap the negating polygon to the primary polygon,  
in case they weren't quite lined up, but no luck.  In fact, snapTo  
seems to have no effect for any of the inputs I provide, so the  
function must consider the polygon edges in question to be flush  
already.  But I still get holes instead of notches.

I'm scripting this in Ruby, and an excerpt from my Ruby driver code is  
at http://www.asapwebsoft.com/files/geos_client_code_excerpt.rb

Also, the current output from geos_tests.rb (showing a handful of  
failures, probably not related, but I don't know that for sure) is at http://www.asapwebsoft.com/files/test_output.txt

I'm not exactly sure what to try next, but I'm hoping that someone out  
there has some ideas.

Oh, in the process of working on this, I've added the snapping  
features to the C API and the SWIG bindings...hopefully correctly.   
I'll be happy to share those changes if the community wants them.   
Since I'm not a committer, what would I do?  Send patches to the list?

- Kevin

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