Upcoming developments & New applications

[Frank Warmerdam]

Tim Sutton wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> I think the work you are planning looks fantastic. I was just
> wondering if there any plans afoot to support compressed
> imagery such as MrSid or ErMapper's ECW format? I realise these are
> proprietry formats and there may not be open specifications but it
> can't hurt to ask can it?
> 
> We have a couple of largish datasets in .ecw format that ould be nice
> to be able to 'serve up'.

Tim, 

The GDAL library doesn't currently support ECW, but I have been intending
to add it in the future.  ERMapper does provide a free (as in no cost, but
without source) decompression library for use on some platforms.   In the
past MrSid has been much harder to deal with. 
 
> There is also an interesting image compression project called fiasco
> which _is_ open source and may be a good candidate for incorporation
> into MapServer.

I looked into this briefly a few weeks ago, and found that compression was
extremely slow, and took more than my 128MB of ram for a 512x512 image. 
Decompression was faster, but I am not sure it is "web mapping" fast.  As
such, I am not sure how practical fiasco is.  BTW, do you have a current url
for this project?  My old one doesn't respond today. 

Best regards,

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