[Portugal] [Fwd: [OSGeo-Discuss] PostGIS 1.4.0 Released]

[Giovanni Manghi]

> July 24, 2009
> 
> The PostGIS development team has, after a long period of meditation
> and soul searching, released version 1.4.0 of the spatial data
> extension for PostgreSQL.
> 
>   http://postgis.refractions.net/download/postgis-1.4.0.tar.gz
> 
> This new version of PostGIS includes substantial performance
> enhancements, more detailed reference documentation, new output
> formats (GeoJSON) and an improved internal testing system. PostGIS 1.4
> also supports the recent PostgreSQL 8.4 release.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who helped by testing during the release candidate process!
> 
> Your PostGIS Team
> 
> -- Detailed PostGIS 1.4 Release Notes --
> 
>    - As of the 1.4 release series, the public API of PostGIS will not
>          change during minor releases.
> 
>  - Compatibility
>    - The versions below are the *minimum* requirements for PostGIS 1.4
>    - PostgreSQL 8.2 and higher on all platforms
>    - GEOS 3.0 and higher only
>    - PROJ4 4.5 and higher only
> 
>  - New Features
>    - ST_Union() uses high-speed cascaded union when compiled against
>          GEOS 3.1+ (Paul Ramsey)
>    - ST_ContainsProperly() requires GEOS 3.1+
>    - ST_Intersects(), ST_Contains(), ST_Within() use high-speed cached
>          prepared geometry against GEOS 3.1+ (Paul Ramsey)
>    - Vastly improved documentation and reference manual
>          (Regina Obe & Kevin Neufeld)
>    - Figures and diagram examples in the reference manual (Kevin Neufeld)
>    - ST_IsValidReason() returns readable explanations for validity
>          failures (Paul Ramsey)
>    - ST_GeoHash() returns a geohash.org signature for geometries
>          (Paul Ramsey)
>    - GTK+ multi-platform GUI for shape file loading (Paul Ramsey)
>    - ST_LineCrossingDirection() returns crossing directions (Paul Ramsey)
>    - ST_LocateBetweenElevations() returns sub-string based on Z-ordinate.
>          (Paul Ramsey)
>    - Geometry parser returns explicit error message about location of
>          syntax errors (Mark Cave-Ayland)
>    - ST_AsGeoJSON() return JSON formatted
>    - Populate_Geometry_Columns() -- automatically add records to
>          geometry_columns for TABLES and VIEWS (Kevin Neufeld)
>    - ST_MinimumBoundingCircle() -- returns the smallest circle
>          polygon that can encompass a geometry (Bruce Rindahl)
> 
>  - Enhancements
>    - Core geometry system moved into independent library, liblwgeom.
>          (Mark Cave-Ayland)
>    - New build system uses PostgreSQL "pgxs" build bootstrapper.
>          (Mark Cave-Ayland)
>    - Debugging framework formalized and simplified. (Mark Cave-Ayland)
>    - All build-time #defines generated at configure time and placed in
>          headers for easier cross-platform support (Mark Cave-Ayland)
>    - Logging framework formalized and simplified (Mark Cave-Ayland)
>    - Expanded and more stable support for CIRCULARSTRING,
>          COMPOUNDCURVE and CURVEPOLYGON, better parsing,
>          wider support in functions (Mark Leslie & Mark Cave-Ayland)
>    - Improved support for OpenSolaris builds (Paul Ramsey)
>    - Improved support for MSVC builds (Mateusz Loskot)
>    - Updated KML support (Olivier Courtin)
>    - Unit testing framework for liblwgeom (Paul Ramsey)
>    - New testing framework to comprehensively exercise every
>      PostGIS function (Regine Obe)
>    - Performance improvements to all geometry aggregate
>      functions (Paul Ramsey)
>    - Support for the upcoming PostgreSQL 8.4 (Mark Cave-Ayland,
>      Talha Bin Rizwan)
>    - Shp2pgsql and pgsql2shp re-worked to depend on
>      the common parsing/unparsing code in liblwgeom (Mark Cave-Ayland)
>    - Use of PDF DbLatex to build PDF docs and preliminary
>      instructions for build  (Jean David Techer)
>    - Automated User documentation build (PDF and HTML) and
>      Developer Doxygen Documentation (Kevin Neufeld)
>    - Automated build of document images using ImageMagick
>      from WKT geometry text files (Kevin Neufeld)
>    - More attractive CSS for HTML documentation
>      (Dane Springmeyer)
>  - Bug fixes
>    - http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/query?status=closed&milestone=postgis+1.4.0&order=priority