(Off topic) Hey Martin,
On Thu, 2009-02-05 at 09:24 -0800, Martin Davis wrote: > Is the issue that for large geometries there is no suitable projection > which reduces distortion to an acceptable level? E.g. if you want to > measure the coastline of Canada there's no projection which will give > you the "correct" answer. This is a particularly unfortunate example since this very question (for England, not Canada) was the title of a landmark scientific paper which showed the question to be meaningless. Coastlines are irregular down to the plank length. Any linear 'length' we assign will merely reflect the resolution with which we choose to describe the coast. It seems that the best way to tackle such shapes is to consider them to exist in a different dimension from linear space. That dimension to use turns out to be fractional (it lies between 1 and 2) which gives rise to, and names, 'fractals'. But that's got nothing to do with the discussion, and the proposed work which is of interest for other reasons. cheers, --adrian _______________________________________________ jts-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/jts-devel
