[postgis-devel] [raster] Architecture wiki document contribution

[Bryce L Nordgren]

On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Pierre Racine
<Pierre.Racine at sbf.ulaval.ca> wrote:
>>       I also don't think introducing the concept of mask is also necessary. We
>> can do every operations without masks.
>>
>>  "Rasterizing vectors" is the same thing as making a mask.
>
> What if you burn an attribute value like 102  in the raster? Is it still just a mask?


Ok, ANOTHER example of why we need the architecture document. If
"vector" means "geometry", you don't have any values. The only thing
you can do when you rasterize a geometry is make a mask. There are no
other options.

The above statement only becomes relevant when "vector" means
"geometry-value". Then the user at runtime (not you at design time)
should have a choice of creating a mask or creating a raster with
values.