[Xastir-dev] first cut at geocoder

[Curt, WE7U]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, Derrick J Brashear wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, Curt, WE7U wrote:
>
> >
> > "shortest path algorithms" "graph theory"
> >
> > Lots of hits on Google.
>
> well, but then, do you store the stuff you do it against in shape files or
> something else? and how do you keep it in memory? some library kit?

I think we'd need to know which points are connected to which, and
the distance for each line segment.  Using that we could calculate
the shortest path between points A and B.  Trying to do this
on-the-fly from shapefiles would be rather slow.

We'd also want to try to be smart about it and not head out too far
in the wrong direction checking each and every path.  Perhaps that
optimization would get us into trouble?

First thoughts are that we'd have to have a separate database
containing the graph points/distances.  From that we could more
quickly compute the shortest path between any two points.

Perhaps that database and the geocoding database could be combined
into one.  Maybe the geocoding database has the info we need buried
in it already?  I doubt it though.

--
Curt, WE7U			    archer at eskimo dot com
Arlington, WA, USA		http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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