Use generics for index classes?

[dbaston]

What do people think about updating some of the index classes to use generics? It would be nice to not cast the return values from spatial index queries, etc.

[dr-jts]

Possible reasons to NOT do this are:

• in the past there were requests to keep JTS at 1.4 compatibility, for use on mobile
• may prevent use of JSTS transpiler? @bjornharrtell, can you comment?

[bjornharrtell]

May require some work on the transpilation but should not be too hard to fix.

[jnh5y]

Generally, I'm interested in seeing JTS attract folks who work on optimizing spatial indices. As an option for JTS 1.x, could we experiment with this in a JTS-indexing-labs package?

[dr-jts]

This would break current API, wouldn't it? I.e. would require classes to be instantiated specifying the contained type?

Or is it possible to make the generic type optional (but seems unlikely...)?

[dbaston]

I thought it just defaulted to Object if you omitted it.

[dr-jts]

I thought it just defaulted to Object if you omitted it.

If so, that would be awesomely awesome! And indeed it appears you may be right: http://www.angelikalanger.com/GenericsFAQ/FAQSections/ParameterizedTypes.html#FAQ201