[Gdal-dev] E00 format

[Daniel Morissette]

> Sylvain Rioux wrote:
> 
> Is there any work in progress regarding e00 format support in OGR? If
> not, is there a translator that exist (Open Source) from this format
> to one in OGR? I know that Daniel Morissette worked on an
> Import/Export library (AVCE00) but I can't figure out exactly why it
> is not in OGR (I'm pretty sure it must be related to $$$) or why it
> does not export to shp.
> 

Bonjour Sylviain,

OGR supports reading binary coverages via the AVCE00 library, but it
doesn't support E00.  The reasons AFAIK are a combination of $$$,
priorities, and usefulness... E00s are text files and would be too slow
to be usable in webmapping apps (which is where the $$$ were coming
from), so the priority was set on supporting binary coverages which can
be accessed a bit faster.  Of course if someone has the $$$ then I'm
sure Frank would be happy to add E00 support.

Finally, if you have E00 files you can convert them to binary coverages
using the AVCIMPORT utility that comes with the AVCE00 library, and then
use the binary coverages via OGR.

Oh, and with respect to your last question: AVCE00 doesn't export to shp
because it's not really a data conversion library, it's only smart
enough to read binary coverage files and turn them to ASCII E00 and
vice-versa.  (Actually the internal structure of binary coverage files
is extremely similar ot the structure of E00 files, so it's for the most
part a mapping of ASCII to binary data structures and vice-versa without
trying to make sense of what is being converted.)

Daniel
-- 
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 Daniel Morissette               morissette at dmsolutions.ca
 DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
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