OGR/WKT

[Steve Lime]

Don't worry about being and a-hole. It's important to get the level of detail correct
for future RFC's. Is the public API all you were looking for or perhaps more?

Your description of the API is what I had in mind, but I'll have to look around the rest
of the code to see how shapes are created. This API is works well with MapScript.
Working with basic shapes should not be an issue since that's what we do all the 
time via MapScript. It's quite common to have shapes without attributes. The 
GEOS and OGR interfaces would be named similarly but with OGR and GEOS as 
prefixes, after the ms (e.g. msGEOSShapeToWKT).

Steve

>>> Frank Warmerdam <fwarmerdam at GMAIL.COM> 08/05/05 2:59 PM >>>
On 8/5/05, Steve Lime <steve.lime at dnr.state.mn.us> wrote:
> I've added a few more comments as well talking about:
> 
>  - support for both reading AND writing
>  - the addition of a "toString" method to shapeObj's in MapScript
>  - leveraging both OGR and GEOS, with a public WKT API that wraps access to those
>  - adding "-wkt" as a option to the [shpxy ...] tag in MapServer query templates

Steve,

I was still hoping to see the public API entry points that will
go into mapprimitive.c defined explicitly.  I would assume something
like:

   shapeObj *msShapeFromWKT( const char * );

and

   char *msShapeToWKT( shapeObj * ); 

Is that right?  

Also, I think you should be fairly specific in how such a function
works.  For instance, mentioning that it initializes the attribute list 
to an empty list and that the index, tileindex, classindex will be
all zero, and text NULL.  I am wondering if there are any effects
to be concerned about from that.

Also, I have assumed in my above proposal that new shapeObj's
would be allocated by the function but that is not actually how
most shapeObj operators work now I think.  Instead most initialize
an existing shapeObj. 

> Can we call for a vote at this point?

As chair that is certainly within your perogitive.  In fact, I think any
proposer could do so at any point. 

At the risk of being a complete a--hole I will take the opportunity
to vote -1 pending clarification of the public API.  
 
> (Also, where's the resting place for the RFC's. CVS or the website. If CVS, then how
> can the website be automatically updated?)

There seems to be some ambiguity about which is primary and there
is no automatic way to update both.  I would be happy enough to make
the web site primary but to be honest these content management systems
make me nervous.  I can just imagine a harddrive failure resulting the
the material being gone forever and unrecoverable.  

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com 
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam 
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent