[gdal-dev] new data type

[April Shimitz]

>April,
>
>First, I hate adding new data types to GDAL. It is a data model change,
>and I hate data model
>changes. Can you make a case for why complex signed byte is needed, and
>why the data can't
>be internally promoted to complex 16bit integer?
>
>Best regards,

Frank,

Currently LAS doesn't support any complex signed byte data, but support
for such will undoubtedly be needed as new satellites are lauched and
new data formats are created, or if we are asked to support the existing
SAR complex data sets. We could just promote the data to complex 16bit
integer at the driver level, as you suggested, but then you'd end up
doubling the size of a file that's usually already very large (very high
resolution data).

One reason that drove us to use GDAL for our I/O library was the
extensibility of the data types. If it's just a matter of the time it
would take you to implement the changes, would you be against us making
the changes to the GDAL core to support it when the need arises?

April