[Geotools-devel] Textual Features

[John M. <joh...@so...>]

I'm working on the VPF implementation and am running into a problem with
the VPF Text Primitives.  These are "features" defined a point, line, or
line and control points that define where some text should be drawn.  As
a quick hack I wrote something that would take these points and return
them as a LineString geometry.  The text that should be drawn is
available as an attribute of the feature.  This definitely feels very
hackish.  

I've taken a look at the examples and have seen the TextSymbolizer, but
this appears to draw the text in addition to the geometry feature that's
drawn.  For VPF the text should be drawn instead of the geometry.  

This problem is compounded for me because I'm allowing any DataStore to
be used (using DataStoreFinder) and then using my own rendering code.
In that rendering code I need a way to determine in some automatic way
that this is a text feature.  

So any thoughts on some general indicator signifying that the geometry
is really the text that should be drawn and the feature's geometry
should be used as a guideline for how to draw it.  This could be an
attribute (text_geomtry) containing the text that should be displayed or
indicating the attribute name used to get the text.