[R-sig-Geo] FW: [STATSGRASS] Questions on calculating minimum distance between polygons and map attributes after m.in.e00

[White.Denis at epamail.epa.gov]

I am a new member of r-sig-geo and saw your message in
the archives.  I don't know whether you already had
algorithms in mind, or received some responses on this,
but two publications with algorithms are:

Chin F, Wang CA.  1983.  Optimal algorithms for the
intersection and the minimum distance problems between
planar polygons.  IEEE Transactions on Computers,
Vol C-32(12):1203-1207.

Okabe A, Miller HJ.  1996.  Exact computation methods for
calculating distances between objects in a cartographic
database.  Cartography and Geographic Information Systems
Vol 23(4):180-195.

> What I would like to do is to try to use an algorithm
> to determine the shortest distance between points on
> two states’ outer boundaries, with each state defined
> either as a polygon or union of polygons.