Origin of the multi-geometry
I'm trying to track down the origin of the geometry collection concept. Did it originate inside or outside GIS? JSTOR has nothing for me. Via Martin Davis, I've found a paper by Egenhofer and Herring [1] [PDF] which mentions a "complex line" on page 6:
– A complex line is a line with more than two disconnected boundaries (Figure 1d).
but makes no mention of multipoints, multilines, or multipolygons. Figure 1d in that paper shows a forking line, like a lower-case Greek lamba: λ.
Anybody have a good reference?
Comments
Most likely GIS
Author: GIS oriented
How else would you represent the multiple islands of Hawaii or states like Michigan as a single shape?
Re: Origin of the multi-geometry
Author: Sean
Sure, but where did the concept first crop up? In a paper? In software?
Re: Origin of the multi-geometry
Author: Sean
Another read of that paper makes me think there may be a germ of geometry collections in "cell complexes".
Re: Origin of the multi-geometry
Author: Martin Davis
Cell complexes are quite different to Multi-geometry. They are a fairly deep topological concept.
To turn the question around - why do you care? I suspect any "origin" you come up with won't be all that interesting, since Multi-geometry is just a fairly obvious extension to single geometries, so it's likely to have been invented numerous times (how long have shapefiles been around?)