Geografic-Information-System/raster/r.contour/README

Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:35:54 +0700
From: Justin Hickey <jhickey@hpcc.nectec.or.th>
Organization: HPCC, NECTEC

Hi Andrea & Markus

> Justin, any description of the current algorithm would be welcomed.

OK, I'll try and I hope I don't confuse anyone. Terry uses the term cell
in her code, but it does not refer to a single raster cell. It is a 2x2
cell "window" of the raster map. She defines the upper left cell as the
"origin" and goes clockwise around the four cells to define their order.
That is, the order would be as follows:

*---*---*
| 0 | 1 |
*---*---*
| 3 | 2 |
*---*---*

She also defines an "edge" which are the edges of this 2x2 cell. She uses
this window to scan the file for a contour line using sub-cell 0 as an
index reference. Once she finds one, she follows the line until it goes
outside the map edge or comes back to the starting point, keeping track
of which edge the contour line enters and leaves the window (thus
following the line). The line can be followed in either clockwise or
counter-clockwise direction. I assume this is determined by the current
"edge" but I didn't check it.

The scanning order for the map is top, bottom, left, right (at this
point all contour lines that go past the edge of the map are defined
leveing only complete loops inside), and then the inside of the map.

One problem is that she keeps track of a "hit" array which indicates
which raster cell indices (row and column coordinates) have been used to
define a contour point for this particular level. She mainly uses this to
find the starting point of a contour. The problem is that she does not
use the hit array while calculating the contour points. Thus, we get
duplicate points causing the problems we see. In trying to use this hit
array to detect duplicate points, I found that although the hit array is
indexed on sub-cell 0, the calculated contour point can be indexed on
any of the four sub-cells or even fractions of the cells due to the
interpolation of the contour point. Basically, the calculated contour
point in raster cell coordinates (before the conversion to UTM
coordinates) does not necessarily match the coordinates used for the hit
array. I have come up with a way to still use the hit array to detect
duplicates, but haven't tested it yet.

As she calculates points for the contour line, she appends them to a
line_pnts structure and then writes the new vector line to the vector
file. One thing I fixed was that her algorithm could sometimes create
consecutive duplicate points. I changed this so that only points
different from the previous point are appended to the line.

That's it in a nutshell, the only other thing to add is that she finds
all contour lines for a level, then cleans the hit array and goes to the
next level.

As I said, I still don't understand all of the algorithm but at least I
have a general idea of how it works. Please let me know if either of you
have questions or comments.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jazzman (a.k.a. Justin Hickey)  e-mail: jhickey@hpcc.nectec.or.th
High Performance Computing Center
National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)
Bangkok, Thailand
==================================================================
People who think they know everything are very irritating to those
of us who do.  ---Anonymous

Jazz and Trek Rule!!!
==================================================================


Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:46:06 -0600
From: Helena <hmitaso@unity.ncsu.edu>
Organization: NCSU

Markus,

this is what Bill says, including the description of the algorithm.
The original r.contour worked pretty well, so I assume that most
problems may be due to the floating point and NULL (which would
change the handling of special cases and which probably wasn't taken
care of.)
I don't remeber who ported r.contour to FP - it might have been Olga
Waupotitsch (she did most of the FP port).  Bill is right, I don't believe
that Terry (she is a woman, BTW) could help too much here. I use r.contour
occasionally and I don't remember any problems, although I usually run it
without mask, so NULLs may be the most problematic issue (Terry left before
those were introduced.) I hope that Bill's description of the algorithm will
be helpfull,

Helena
--------------------------------------------------

Helena,

I don't know if Terry is still at the same place in Texas or not.
I looked at her code - the algorithm is fairly straight forward, it's
the NULL and special cases that might be a little tricky.  I'm sure
she wouldn't remember much about it after 7 years, and I don't think
she made the changes for NULL anyway.

Here's the general algorithm for the type of grid contouring Terry used:

- Bill

for each contour level{
    /* scan borders */
    for each edge on perimeter{
      check edge for crossing with check_edge;
      if crossing{
        start line at crossing;
        while not done{
          mark crossing;
          find exit crossing and record segment with findcrossing;
          crossing=exit_crossing;
          if exit_crossing on perimeter
            {
             mark exit_crossing;
             done=true;
             write line;
            }
          move into next cell;
        }
      }
    }
    /* scan interior */
    for each vertical interior edge {
      check edge for crossing with check_edge;
      if crossing and not marked {
        start line at crossing;
        while not done {
          mark crossing;
          find exit crossing and record segment with findcrossing;
          crossing = exit_crossing;
          if exit_crossing == start_crossing{
            done=true
            write line;
          }
        }
      }
    }
}


findcrossing()
{

  check remaining 3 cell edges for crossings using check_edge

  if ONE other edge crossed (total crossings == 2)
        return edge crossing point;
  else if crossings = 4{
      evaluate middle point as mean of 4 surrounding values;
      use an "X" through the "cell" (actually corners are 4 surrounding
      cell center points) to determine saddle configuration by
      checking edges of 4 triangles with check_edge;
      return edge crossing point;
  }
}

check_edge()
{

  if left endpoint < threshold <= right endpoint
  or left endpoint >= threshold > right endpoint{
      crossing = linear interpolate;
      return crossing;
  }
  else
      return no crossing;
}