r.in.tiff error/ "geoPNG" proposal

[Eric G . Miller]

On Sat, Mar 11, 2000 at 10:39:44AM +0000, Markus Neteler wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> good news on raster image import/export:
> 
> Alex Shavlakov managed to write
> 
>  r.in.png
>  r.out.png
> 
> with full 24bit support. These modules are uploaded
> to CVS repository (as usual).
> 
> To overcome patent restrictions I made the proposal
> to develop a new open source GIS raster standard:
> 
>  "geoPNG"
> 
> It should be comparing to geoTIFF and may follow
> OpenGIS conventions. We discussed this idea with
> few people, perhaps it could be discussed in this
> forum, too.
> 
> The idea of "geoPNG" is to store
>  - the raster file itself
>  - additional projection/koordinate information
> for easy file exchange.
> 
> As r.in.png/r.out.png are existing now we could
> proceed on working on this topic.

I think we should consider reimplementing r.in.tiff/r.out.tiff without
support for LZW compression.  The geoTIFF format(s) is pretty widely used
and there's no requirement that the images be compressed with LZW
compression.  For instance, neither of the ESRI products I use at work
(ARC/INFO, ArcView) support LZW compression without extensions for the
very same patent reason. However, they still support geoTIFFs. I see no
reason why GRASS can't do the same. There's also a geoGIF -- same world
file structure, no LZW, and a geoJPG -- same world file, dubious value
due to Lossy compression scheme.

However, I do think the geoPNG is a great idea as well, so kudos to Alex
Shavlakov for implementing it.

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| Eric G. Miller                        egm2 at jps.net |
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