gdal_translate rewrite and vacation

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

As long promised I have finally rewritten gdal_translate to utilize virtual
datasets. The change is checked into CVS.

The issue is that many file formats (via GDAL) can only be created properly
when they are "cloning" an existing dataset. This is the "CreateCopy" method
of writing a new file.

Gdal_translate previously only supported CreateCopy output formats when
no changes were made to the input (no subwindowing, resampling, partial
band selection, etc). I have now modified gdal_translate to create a
"virtual dataset" which can be cloned, but which understand what part of
the original file it represents. This ensures the CreateCopy formats can
now be generated while applying other changes like resizing.

One caveat is that virtual datasets don't yet know how to scale pixel values,
so if you are using the scaling feature of gdal_translate it will fallback
to the old mechanism that won't work with some output formats.

Also, of course, the virtual dataset based mechanism has not been tested
carefully, so beware.

PS. I am going to be at a Linux Symposium in Ottawa for the remainder of
this week (well starting tomorrow), and on vacation all of next week so
forgive me if I am not very accessable for a while.

Best regards,

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