[OSGeo-Discuss] idea for an OSGeo project -- a new, open data format

[Landon Blake]

Christopher,

I don't work with web GIS much, so I didn't think about this. I
appreciate you pointing it out.

In this case I think a good compromise is to keep separate files, but to
zip them up in an archive like you suggested.

Landon

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Christopher
Schmidt
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 8:13 AM
To: OSGeo Discussions
Cc: punkish at eidesis.org
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] idea for an OSGeo project -- a new,open
data format

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 07:42:12AM -0800, Landon Blake wrote:
> 
> You wrote: " that would be completely Free,
> single-file based (instead of the multiple .shp, .dbf, .shx, etc..."
> 
> Is there a problem with a multiple file format? I have tinkered with
> some different binary file formats, and it seems that separating some
> information in a spatial data set (like indexes, for example) makes it
> easier to create programs that parse and write the format.

Although I can see both sides of an argument here, for working over the
web, multiple files are *much* more difficult, for the simple reason
that you can't have someone download 'a file' and use it in their tool.
This doesn't mean that internally, the representation can't be stored in
multiple logical groups -- KML, for example, accomplishes multiple file
storage via zipping up a directory of files, and some ponderance on .shz
(zipped shapefiles, with all three important bits included) has been
bounced around in my presence before. I can't speak to implementation
details, but for 'moving data around', a single file format is much
preferred  over the web. 

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer
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