Alignment with the GeoJSON spec

[benjamintd]

Hi @tmcw !

I hope this is the right place to submit comments about your proposal.
I really like the idea, and just wanted to give a few initial thoughts about the spec. I think the nomenclature could be closer to GeoJSON with a few tweaks:

• using PascalCase for types (Root, Folder)
• renaming the meta key to properties to further align with the place attributes are typically found in GeoJSON.

Using your example, it could look like:

{
  "type": "Root",
  "children": [
    {
      "type": "Folder",
      "properties": {
        "name": "Test"
      },
      "children": [
         // ...features and folders
      ]
    }
    // ...features
  ]
}

This would make the structure "feel" more like GeoJSON, if that is something this spec is concerned with.

[tmcw]

Okay, yes!

• Using PascalCase makes a lot of sense. Good reason to do it, no reason not to do it.
• properties… also I think is a straightforward win, in the direction of inventing less. The GeoJSON spec is a little strict about FeatureCollections and Geometries not having properties but I don't think that means anything for whether a totally new object can have em.

[sgillies]

@tmcw what is a Folder's properties about? Is it just an anything-goes namespace for user data? Do features in a folder acquire the properties from their folder?

The reason why GeoJSON Geometry and FeatureCollection don't have properties is to help interoperability. I was pretty convinced that users would fuzz the boundaries between FeatureCollection/Feature/Geometry in non-compatible ways if we made them all feature-like. I wonder if GeoJSON Folders is in a similar place? If I have a Folder with properties and it contains a GeoJSON Geometry, would we treat it as a Feature?

[tmcw]

Do features in a folder acquire the properties from their folder?

No - basically this is for folder metadata, which in the most basic case is just a name. KML is a classic example - folders have names and descriptions and IDs. In GPX, you might translate each track to a folder, and in that case the GPX track has a name, usually.

If I have a Folder with properties and it contains a GeoJSON Geometry, would we treat it as a Feature?

I hope not! Folders should have a children and properties object and nothing else. Would want to make that distinction very clear. Would calling the folder metadata meta or metadata help with this distinction, or is this something you think could just live in a strongly-worded spec?