[geos-devel] M-coordinate support

[Mike Toews]

Hi devs,

I'd like to know if "measure" or M-coordinate support is somewhere on
the development horizon for GEOS. I could see the benefit of opening
client software to support ISO 19125 compliant geometries, such as in
OGR or Shapely.

Possibly the first widespread use of M-coordinates started in the
1990s with the Shapefile file format, as detailed in the 1998 ESRI
technical specs. With open source software, Shapelib and PostGIS has
supported M-coordinates for quite some time (possibly close to a
decade?). More recently, Simple Features Access Standards published by
OGC and later ISO 19125, detail the use and storage of of
M-coordinates in various geometry types.

Are there any limitations to adopting M-coordinate support for GEOS?
Potential performance loss? Other limitations or incompatibilities?
I'm curious, as I often run into instances where this dimension is
useful, but am a bit stumped at it's lack of support in some software.
Thanks.

-Mike