[postgis-devel] ISO WKT/WKB

[Paul Ramsey]

http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/287
http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/288

I'm ready to implement these. However, note that it's a scary time,
more particularly I think for WKB than WKT. It's possible to build a
WKB handler that can ingest both ISO-WKB and EWKB (in fact, we have
one) but not every client software will have one of these already in
place. Problems only occur with higher-dimensional geometries.

ST_AsText(geography) and ST_AsBinary(geography) already return ISO.

{{{
postgis20=# select st_astext('POINT Z (0 0 0)'::geometry);
 st_astext
------------
 POINT(0 0)
(1 row)

postgis20=# select st_astext('POINT Z (0 0 0)'::geography);
    st_astext
-----------------
 POINT Z (0 0 0)
(1 row)
}}}

Anyhow, implementing them would bring us to a "new consistency" but
would require any client that expects ST_AsBinary() and ST_AsText() to
consistently return 2d to be upgraded. Folks already consuming 3d/4d
will necessarily be using ST_AsEWKB and ST_AsEWKT so changing
ST_AsText() and ST_AsBinary() won't effect them, nor will the
differences in representation between ISO and EWKB/T.

P.