[GRASS5] New USGS DEM data format

[Eric G. Miller]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 08:55:11PM -0600, Roger S. Miller wrote:
[snip]
> >   Read the article. They _did_ change the data and they modified SDTS
> > format. Strangely enough, only ARC/GIS-8 supports that format. And the GS is
> > a complete ESRI shop (which is how ESRI got to be as big as they are).
> 
> Actually, as I read the article it appears that the format change
> they're talking about isn't a change *in* the SDTS format, but the (now
> old news) change *to* the SDTS format.  The article is talking about the
> differences between the old DEM format (which I think was mostly phased
> out more than a year ago) and the SDTS format.

I couldn't find anything about changes to the SDTS format since 1999 at
the SDTS website (last standard extension for raster profiles).  I think
the format change might be meters --> decimeters thing???  If they made
other significant changes that are not conforming to the standard, then
they really shouldn't call it SDTS anymore!

> They underestimate the number of applications that read SDTS.  The SDTS
> standard was published quite a while ago.  Surfer started importing SDTS
> files in version 6, which was released in 1997.  I could have sworn that
> GRASS used to have at least a v.in.sdts, but now I can't find it.  I
> must be going crazy. Some programs were available from government
> agencies for reading SDTS files almost as soon as the standard was
> published.

v.in.sdts is in GRASS 5 and works (I've used it) -- It's in
src.contrib/SDTS/ and uses the FIPS123 library (for ISO 8211 format
reading).  As noted, r.in.gdal seems to work okay (though it didn't read
the projection info for me when I tested it yesterday).  r.in.gdal
doesn't give you access to all the metadata info like v.in.sdts will --
but there is m.sdts.read which is a generic ISO 8211 to text reader
(works well).

-- 
Eric G. Miller <egm2 at jps.net>