[postgis-users] Semantics of difference() function

[Martin Davis]

Agreed, Andy.  Good summary.

I think the operation also is meaningful for the case (line, polygon) => 
line (this is equivalent to a combination of line.difference(polygon) 
and line.intersection(polygon) )

Having thought about this with an eye to implementation, I've take the 
definition a bit further:

* The result of split(g1, g2) is a two-component GeometryCollection, 
GC(c1, c2). 
* The first component c1 is the portion of g1 which lies to inside, to 
the left of, or before, g2 (depending on whether g2 is a polygon, line 
or point).  The second component c2 is the portion of g1 which lies 
outside, to the right of, or after g2. 
* The types of c1 and c2 are the same as g1.  c1 and c2 may be empty, in 
degenerate cases (e.g,. where one or more components of g1 are not 
intersected, or intersected only at their boundary).
* Any components of g2 which have a position which is not well-defined 
relative to g2 (e.g.which are not intersected, or which are intersected 
only partially), are returned as components of c1 (--- this rule is 
fairly arbitrary - a different strategy might make equal sense)



Andy Anderson wrote:
>
> On Jun 4, 2008, at 11:49 AM, Martin Davis wrote:
>> To answer a question you posed on your blog, the reason that when you 
>> subtract a line from a polygon you get basically the same polygon, 
>> rather than say the polygon split into two halves, is that if the 
>> latter was provided as a MultiPolygon it would be invalid, because 
>> the halves would share line segments down the middle.  Also, if the 
>> line did not fully overlap the polygon there's no choice - you have 
>> to return the original poly.  The behaviour is thus consistent 
>> between the two cases.
>>
>
>> Unfortunately the SFS (and no other standard I'm aware of) doesn't 
>> define the precise semantics of the overlay operations.  So I made 
>> 'em up!  Hopefully they are consistent and reasonable.  There's no 
>> doubt alternative definitions which might be useful in some cases - 
>> but you have to choose one definition for any given function.  (For 
>> the situation above, many people would like a "cut polygon by line" 
>> operation - hopefully that will get provided as a new function 
>> sometime soon).
>
> I've seen "split" as a term that is commonly used for such operations, 
> e.g.
>
> geometry = ST_Split(geometry1, geometry2)
>
> This should be defined for geometry1 of dimensionality D ≥ 1 and 
> geometry2 of dimensionality D or D-1, i.e. (polygon, polygon), 
> (polygon, line), (line, line), and (line, point). The result should be 
> GeometryType(geometry) == 'GeometryCollection' where for any n 
> GeometryType(ST_GeometryN(geometry, n)) == GeometryType(geometry1).
>
> -- Andy
>
>
>
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-- 
Martin Davis
Senior Technical Architect
Refractions Research, Inc.
(250) 383-3022