I'm also with Chris on this.  If we can find a package to handle the dirty bits 
and wrap it with the correct interfaces to get us through, then move to a 
"better" implementation as we go, I think we should.  Does anyone have any 
suggestions for a library that is nicely licensed that has this functionality?

Joe
On Dec 4, 2012, at 5:14 PM, Adam Estrada <[email protected]> wrote:

> I will agree with Mattmann about the license compatibility issues. As for
> GeoAPI, why has nothing been done with that project in so long? Don't want
> to hijack this thread but it seems like the projects could benefit each
> other nicely. Why is that not happening? For the time-being I believe we
> should set the stage for a "next generation" geospatial framework in SIS.
> 
> 
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 12:41 AM, Mattmann, Chris A (388J) <
> [email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Martin,
>> 
>> If it's not too much trouble, 2, then 2b seem to be the best choices IMHO.
>> We take something with a friendly academic, permissive
>> license now, compatible with Apache SIS and ALv2, and then as we need, we
>> provide our own implementation as we evolve. Seems
>> small, and incremental enough for consensus :)
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>> 
>> On Dec 1, 2012, at 8:33 AM, Martin Desruisseaux wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello all
>>> 
>>> There is a technical problem for which the current situation is not
>> satisfying, and for which I have trouble to find the best action...
>>> 
>>> We needs a "Unit of measurement" framework. Because this is important to
>> so many domains (even the JDK has a TimeUnit class), we made a
>> standardisation attempts 12 years ago (JSR-108), which failed [1]. We made
>> a second attempt (JSR-275), which failed again [2]. GeoAPI - and
>> consequently current Apache SIS - currently have a dependency toward this
>> failed JSR-275 attempt. This obviously brings two problems:
>>> 
>>> 1) JSR-275 namespace (javax.measure.unit) is not supposed to exist.
>>> 2) JSR-275 bugs will never be fixed.
>>> 
>>> After JSR-275 rejection, the main JSR-275 authors moved their API as
>> interfaces in the "org.unitsofmeasurement.unit" package under a BSD-like
>> license [3]. Those interfaces are implemented by the Eclipse UOMo project
>> among others [4], and his maintainer told me that they are gaining
>> acceptance in the Eclipse community.
>>> 
>>> However the maintainer told me that a sensor-related JSR have good
>> chances to start in 2013, could include units of measurement, and that they
>> want to go fast. This would bring yet another package name in the mix (or
>> maybe they would reuse the javax.measure.unit one - we don't know). So the
>> alternatives at this time are:
>>> 
>>> 1) Keep JSR-275 for now, wait and see.
>>> 2) Adopt org.unitsofmeasurement interfaces, then:
>>> 2a) Adopt UOMo implementation
>>> 2b) Provide our own implementation
>>> 3) Define our own interfaces
>>> 
>>> On 1), we are already waiting for two years and I still have trouble to
>> figure out if yes or no a third JSR attempt will happen... On 2), the
>> problem is that the decision does not involve only SIS, but also GeoAPI,
>> and as a standardisation attempt we are better to be as sure as possible
>> that we will not change again if, for example, Oracle starts a new JSR. On
>> 2a), I have not tried this UOMo implementation. But I had some trouble with
>> the JSR-275 implementation. Many statics methods in the Units class that I
>> just committed today [5] are workarounds for JSR-275 bugs or limitations.
>> Some methods like "valueOfEPSG" (scroll down until the bottom of the page)
>> are very specific to the geospatial domain and unlikely to be supported
>> natively by an external unit framework. The NetCDF unit names
>> ("degrees_east", "degrees_north") are also quite specific, so maybe having
>> our own implementation is not completely non-sense. On 2b) actually we
>> already have an implementation from old JSR-108 days, so it could be easily
>> refactored to "org.unitsofmeasurement" interfaces. On 3), it would need to
>> be done in GeoAPI I don't think it would have a lot of support...
>>> 
>>> The GeoAPI working group is not active at this time, so I suspect that
>> we may have more discussion on this SIS list, then brings a proposal to the
>> GeoAPI list. This proposal (about interfaces only - the implementation
>> decision stay on the SIS side only) would need to be written as a change
>> request and posted before December 27 if we want it to be considered at the
>> next OGC meeting.
>>> 
>>> Any though, opinion, proposal would be highly appreciated...
>>> 
>>>   Regards,
>>> 
>>>       Martin
>>> 
>>> 
>>> [1] http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=108
>>> [2] http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=275
>>> [3] http://www.unitsofmeasurement.org/
>>> [4] http://www.eclipse.org/uomo/
>>> [5]
>> https://builds.apache.org/job/sis-jdk7/site/apidocs/org/apache/sis/measure/Units.html
>>> 
>> 
>> 

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