[MetaCRS] Presentation

[Martin Desruisseaux]

Hello all

I would like to present myself. I'm Martin Desruisseaux. I wrote the GeoTools 
referencing module with the help of contributors and Proj4 code related to map 
projection, bundled with the GeoTools LGPL licence with Frank's permission. I 
still the main maintainer of this module so far.

The GeoTools referencing module is large (> 600 classes if we include metadata). 
Some of its work could be moved out of GeoTools in a cross-language project, 
especially its suite of test scripts (maybe in a refactored way):

http://svn.geotools.org/geotools/trunk/gt/modules/library/referencing/src/test/resources/org/geotools/referencing/test-data/scripts/

(click any file in the above link to see an example).

The GeoTools project is large as well (~ 6000 classes) and the referencing 
module is a little bit lost in the middle of this forest. If there is an 
interest for that and if we have the permission of the GeoTools community, I 
would be glad to see this module hosted on its own SVN on OSGEO, available as a 
separated download, splitted in more sub-modules for allowing users to links 
against smaller JAR if they don't need WKT parsing, EPSG database, etc.

I'm also a maintainer of the GeoAPI project, which is a set of interfaces (no 
implementation - this is not a library) derived from OGC specification in a way 
as straightforward as we can. This project is aimed to be under OGC control:

http://geoapi.sourceforge.net/

GeoAPI is of great help for masking the complexity of GeoTools implementation. 
Except for very few GeoTools factories required in order to "initialize" the 
chain of method calls, users need only to be familiar with those interfaces, 
which is almost synonymous to be familiar with ISO 19111 and some parts of 
legacy OGC 01-009 specifications.

GeoAPI is targeted as a library-neutral and language-neutral project. While only 
Java interfaces are available at this time, the directory structure (compliant 
with Apache Maven 2 conventions) is designed for hosting a varieties of 
languages including C/C++.

	Regards,

		Martin Desruisseaux