In this post I will describe how to implement an algorithm to project a point onto a line. There are numerous formulas to achieve this — most of which terser than the method described here — but their scope is also narrower: they assume your point is already projectable onto the line. Here I will widen the scope and describe not only how to project the point in a didactic way, but also how to test if the point is projectable and provide a GeoTools/JTS implementation.

Towards the end of a previous post I’ve exposed my thought of a wxWidgets plugin for NetBeans, more specifically, a plugin for C++ wxWidgets. If you have followed the tutorial through, you’ve probably realized how difficult it is to set up wxWidgets to be used on Windows using NetBeans. Even after the environment is completely configured, you still lack the power of tools like Matisse to prototype your frames. For now, a simple tool will address this problem: it’s called wxMatisse. wxMatisse is a tool that uses windows created by Matisse to create equivalent windows in C++ wxWidgets.