Geometry Boost List: Re: [geometry] how to find the furthest point pair (= diameter) of a polygon?

Subject: Re: [geometry] how to find the furthest point pair (= diameter) of a polygon?
From: Barend Gehrels (barend_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-08-15 13:15:07

On 14-8-2013 19:03, Adam Wulkiewicz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Mateusz Loskot wrote:
>>
>> By the way, could you share a bit more about what algorithm is planned?
>> A brute force approach, like in PostGIS [1], or any of the known 
>> algorithms [2],
>> or anything else?
>>
>>
>> [1] ST_MinimumBoundingCircle
>> http://svn.osgeo.org/postgis/trunk/postgis/postgis.sql.in
>> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallest-circle_problem
>>
>
> The implementation of minimum bounding (n)sphere calculation is 
> probably also planned. 

Yes it is related

> bg::envelope() and bg::return_envelope() will probably handle other 
> bounding objects than Box. Am I right? Or some other name is choosen?

As said earlier, envelope is an OGC algorithm with a specific meaning 
and the name is well-chosen. I guess more than 99% of the envelopes in 
your postbox is rectangular. The association is OK.

So we might stick to PostGIS convention and call it 
minimum_bounding_circle, or replace the circle with a "ball"  or 
"nsphere" suffix to denote dimensions higher than 2.

Regards, Barend