Hi,
while working on the ShapeMergeFilter I found this because I wanted to add a
field for the OSM id:

MapShape extends MapLine which extends MapElement.
I wonder if that makes sense as MapElement contains 8 fields which are not
usable with shapes:
private String zip,country,region,city,street,phone,houseNumber,isIn;

Esp. with small shapes like small buildings these fields are quite a big memory overhead.

Doesn't Java offer a better solution for this case?

Gerd