Thanks for responding Steve (and fork)

On Mar 30, 2011, at 7:47 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

> Charles Galpin<cgalpin<at>  lhsw.com>  writes:
> 
>> Does anyone have any bright ideas on how to sort linestrings (with postgis
>> or  anything else for that matter).
> 
> ok, need some more criteria here. Sorting linestrings is a proposed solution 
> to an undisclosed problem. What is your problem?

I guess my biggest problem is I don't carry enough clout around here, because I 
wouldn't be doing this if it was my choice :)

It's a stupid requirement. I can't remember some of the reasons (other than 
they want it), but I know of one specific use case where it's just plain 
idiotic and they should use a map and let the user select links of interest 
from it (reporting tool). Instead they want to present the user with a list of 
links and let them wade through them (i assume filter) and select the ones they 
care about, but they want them ordered as if you were traversing the road. A 
map would be such a cleaner way to do it.  It's due to the fact that they 
currently have a set of data that is much smaller and instead of lots of little 
short linestrings they have larger road segments essentially from intersection 
to intersection. And perhaps a perception it's quicker to develop without the 
map.

So I guess in an ideal world I'd build up linestrings from intersection to 
intersection and mimic the kind of thing they have today, although they have 
the same ordering requirement between these larger linestrings too.  I also 
need to enhance our data with the nearest cross roads for the linestrings, and 
better road name and direction, but again most of this is oriented to how they 
did things before with a different data set.

Unless you have better ideas I'll revisit using the lat/lon but recall quickly 
running into problems with curved roads. Also taking a fixed point and 
comparing the distance to it has it flaws with horseshoe shaped roads and 
curves etc.

Thanks,
charles

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