[OpenLayers-Users] Request? - non-self-intersecting polygons

[Tim Schaub]

Hey-

Jeff Dege wrote:
> To your typical computer-science geek, polygons that have lines that
> intersect themselves is a neat idea.  If you draw a pentagram, the
> center pentagon is "outside" the polygon, while the five points are
> "inside" the polygon.
> 
> The polygon drawing tool in OpenLayers works this way.
> 
> It shouldn't.  Not for this user domain.
> 
> Map people aren't drawing geometric shapes, they're drawing features on
> the map.  Overlapping borders don't happen.  And shouldn't happen, with
> the tool.
> 

I think the "correct" result of digitizing a pentagram is five polygons. 
  The result would look much like what you get now, but it would be five 
features instead of one.  At this point, OpenLayers allows 
self-intersecting features mainly because it doesn't have any methods to 
   identify intersecting segments.  I imagine it will stay this way for 
a while.  The algorithms are not too complex, there is just too much 
other work to get done.

If you're looking for a place to change this behavior, it shouldn't be 
done during digitizing - the geometry should be cleaned after the sketch 
is complete.

Tim