[gdal-dev] GDAL Status Report

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

It's been a while since I provided a GDAL status report. I have been working
steadily on contracts which result in extensions to GDAL, or that relate
to vector formats that may eventually become part of GDAL, including alot
of work on OpenGIS related stuff. 

Some Notes:

o I have prepared NMAKE compatible makefiles for GDAL, and it is now 
possible to build GDAL on windows with VC++. If you download 
ftp://gdal.velocet.ca/pub/outgoing/gdal.zip you can cd into the gdal
directory and type ``nmake /f makefile.vc'' to build it. 

o I have added targets to the GDAL makefile to build a library (gdal.a)
and a shared library (gdal.1.0.so). The shared library should contain
all of libtiff, libgeotiff and so forth, providing a simple item to
link against. Note that this shared library is not normally built with
-soname, and isn't compatible with ldconfig (so it can be just dumped
in /usr/lib). This may be resolved in the future, but I got frustrated
and gave up for the time being. I also looked into using libtool but
found it quite intrusive. 

o I have developed a bit of code I call the GDAL Bridge (in gdal/bridge)
which is intended to make it easy to load a GDAL shared library on demand
and use key (C) entry points in another package without having to link 
very much code into that other application.

o LIMP (see http://www.remotesensing.org/LIMP) can now read raster files
supported by GDAL, using the GDAL bridge technlogy to load the GDAL
shared library if it is available (in $GDAL_HOME). The LIMP imgview
application can now be used to display GDAL supported raster files.
There are still a number of limitations to the GDALBLayer implementation
within LIMP (such as supporting only one band and inefficient data
access in some cases) which I hope to address.

I am not intending to pursue work on the Qt gdal_viewer, preferring
to take advantage of the LIMP viewer. 

o I have implemented a simple Spot CAP format reader (gdal/frmts/ceos)
which I hope to grow into a generic CEOS reader eventually. 

o I have implemented a simple reader/writer for ELAS raster format for
Doug Rickman at NASA Marshall. Doug and I are discussing my taking
a contract for NASA in which GDAL would be used to add a variety of
raster translators for ELAS. ELAS is an old remote sensing system 
still used for a variety of research projects within NASA. The ELAS
format support can be found in gdal/frmts/elas. 

o I have implemented support libraries for the ISO8211 data transport
format, and am constructing support for SDTS on top of that for Safe
Software. This code is all within the GDAL source tree (gdal/frmts/sdts
and gdal/frmts/iso8211) though currently it is isn't linked into gdal. 
Eventually I will build an SDTS DEM reader based on this code in 
addition to the vector support being done for Safe. 

o I am working on Simple Features for COM support with Ken on behalf of
Softmap, and Safe Software. This code is currently found in the
gdal/ogr though it may eventually move. This is vector only, so it
has limited utility for GDAL as a raster library.

o I am working informally with Louis Bury, and a group of people working on
an OpenGIS specification for services to access raster coverages. My
hope is to eventually prepare a sample implementation of these services
for COM and CORBA built on GDAL, and to build support into GDAL to use
such services as a format. 

o I have added the GDALProjDef class which abstracts access to PROJ.4 to
perform reprojection. It loads the PROJ.4 shared library at runtime
if available in order to avoid build time dependence on PROJ.4. 

o I am working to flesh out documentation for the Common Portability Library
functions (gdal/port) using Doxygen. 

See http://gdal.velocet.ca/projects/gdal/dev/html/files.html to see this
work in progress.

Regards all,

---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turned up | Frank Warmerdam, warmerda at h...
light and sound - activate the windows | http://members.home.com/warmerda
and watch the world go round - Rush | Geospatial Programmer for Rent

------------------------------------------------------------------------

eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/gdal-dev
http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications