[gdal-dev] MapInfo Datum lookup bug, CSV data for drivers

[Qi-Shan Lim]

Hi all,

I'm new to GDAL/OGR development and have run up against an existing
bug with the MapInfo driver, which I'm willing to help fix. Details
are at http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/481#comment:8 with a comment
which I'll reproduce here for convenience:

I'm hitting this problem as well and really need to get it resolved.
Only just started working with gdal/ogr so comments would be
appreciated on this proposal:

---
1. Change asDatumInfoList to include the EPSG code for the datum. I
imagine this could be accomplished with a mixture of pattern-matching
the names and some manual intervention.

2. Change SetSpatialRef? to look up the data based on the datum's EPSG
code instead of name i.e. use poSpatialRef->GetAuthorityCode?("DATUM")
instead of poSpatialRef->GetAttrValue?("DATUM")

3. (Optional) Move asDatumInfoList (and the other hard-coded data, I
guess) into a csv file.

Is this going to work or am I talking rubbish? If it sounds reasonable
I'll go ahead and do up a patch.
---

I'm posting to the list as point 3 seems to be a general question - is
it acceptable for drivers that required this sort of data to stick it
into a csv file to put into the data/ directory? Also, if this data is
to be generated in some sort of semi-automated way using a script of
some sort, should this script be committed to the source tree?

Would appreciate any advice/help as I get familiar with the code base.

Cheers,

--Qi-Shan