[R-sig-Geo] Any plan of R interface to GEOS

[Roger Bivand]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2006, Hisaji ONO wrote:

> Hello.
> 
>  Currently GEOS C API interface has been already
> available. And RCppTemplate package is also available.
> 
>  I think GEOS's functions are far better than gpclib's. It
> can manipulate points, linestrings, polygons and
> multi-geometries and it has lots of functions(ca. buffer,
> union, overlay query/analysis)
> 
>  If R interface to GEOS, one of core functions of creating
> spatial weight matrices will be easy, faster and correct
> since current spdep took time to build them.
> 
>  Does any one have plan to build R interface using above
> packages?
> 

GEOS is larger than R in terms of disk footprint, the libgeos*.a library 
is 27MB. It could be interfaced directly, but would probably be better 
used through OGR, since the rgdal read/write vector functions have to 
convert sp objects to OGR anyway. I'm not sure in that case whether to 
avoid GEOS, since many users will not have it as part of GDAL, and 
distribution for Windows of a MSYS/MinGW built GEOM inside the gdal DLL 
doesn't seem inviting. I can see arguments for this, but maybe operations 
like this should be done in a GIS?

Best wishes,

Roger

> 
>  Regards.
> 
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-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no