option (or default?) to render points as zero-length lines

[RossPaterson]

Currently it is possible to control the display of lines and areas using the stylesheet, but point objects are always rendered as a circle with radius 1. If a point could be rendered as a zero-length line, i.e. a line with the point as start and end point, users would be able to style the line using the stroke-width property and setting stroke-linecap: round, producing a circle of the desired size.

[fitnr]

The <circle> element can also be styled with the stroke-width property. Are there other reasons for this feature?

[RossPaterson]

True, if a bit clunky: one could get a circle of radius n by setting stroke-width to 2(n-1). A line element can also be styled with a marker-start (or marker-end) property, to place an arbitrary marker on the point. Of course anyone doing this would have to add a marker definition to the SVG file. This could be done with a circle too, I suppose, by giving the circle no fill or stroke and moving the marker by one unit.

[fitnr]

With calc, doing multiplication is relatively low-effort.
A more general change might be to employ a <symbol> and then a <use> element for each point.

[RossPaterson]

After a bit of testing: styling a large stroke-width on a small circle works with Chrome but not with Firefox, librsvg or Inkscape. Styling a marker-start on a circle only works with Inkscape.

The <use> approach seems less flexible: with a stylesheet, one can use different radii or markers depending on values of attributes of the original objects (e.g. types of settlements).