Hi Frank,Re: [Gdal-dev] Geographic Transformer

[Mateusz Łoskot]

Hi Frank,

Frank Warmerdam napisał(a):
> On 10/12/05, Mateusz Łoskot <mateusz at loskot.net> wrote:
> 
>>I've just get announcement about Geographic Transformer by Blue Marble Geog.
>>It seems to be a tool my company is looking for, but I'm pushin GDAL to
>>use in my company. I'd like to as, what are missing features in GDAL in
>>relation to GT?
> 
> 
> Mateusz,
> 
> Skimming through their "features" page I would say that GT has
> advantages with regard to:
> 
>  o GUI
>  o Collection of ground control points graphically.
>  o Some sort of automatical control point collection?
>  o Warping "quality control review".

In my opinion, those two features are very nice.
I wonder how graph of registration accuracy of control points is 
generated. I mean how quality factors are calculated.
I understand it works this way: I have unreferenced raster loaded to GT, 
then I put control points and do all thise referencing job and at the 
end GT generates quality graph. Right?

>  o Graticule overlay.
>  o Cutting images into tiles.

Two features about may be easily implemented in QGIS, as i.e. plugins.

> There set of raster formats seems ... modest. 

Yes.

 > It isn't immediately
> obvious to me if they provide options to rescale (float->byte, etc)
> data, what set of pixel types are supported, etc.

BTW, could you explain me a litle how (and purpose) scaling works in GDAL?

>>It isn't cheap :-) But when I see the features list of GT I'd say there is
>>no lack of features in GDAL, besides nice GUI ;)
>>Certainly, I have coleagues which don't use console-based tools at all,
>>they love GUIs, so it may be the point.
> 
> 
> To some degree the OpenEV and it's Export Tool provides quite
> a bit of what GT does.

Hehe, yes, but what's funny thing I've noticed is that many people say:
"what an awfull GUI, bleeee".
It's also OT, but from marketing point of view, that's one of main 
reasons people does not use tools like OpenEV.

I don't know, may be professionals in USA, Canada etc. have different 
opinions (and I'd bet they have), but I know many tech people and most 
of them are aesthetes and use this fabulous
Windows XP style, so they expect all applications will look that way :-)
If you don't like it, excause me I afforded to digress about taste of UI 
look.

 > The particular hole I would love to fill in
> OpenEV + GDAL is the ability to collect ground control points and
> a reprojection/warping GUI in OpenEV.

QGIS plugin provides such feature.

>>This may be a little OT post but I think some opinions may help potential
>>GDAL users to see its power.
> 
> 
> I don't think it is off topic, and it is interesting to see what commercial
> folks like Blue Marble are doing. 
 > They are one of the few that has
 > attempted to produce a general purpose "geospatial image utility"
 > application.

Definitely, yes.

> I don't forsee GDAL trying to address all the GUI needs addressed
> by the GT product,

Sure, I don't too. I love text console :-)

> but I would like to see one or a few of the
> desktop environments like OpenEV, and QGIS try to handle these
> needs.

That's right. I don't know if/why OpenEV compete with QGIS but don't you 
think close collaboration would be useful? Or may be it is worth to put 
all forces on one project?

Cheers

-- 
Mateusz Łoskot
http://mateusz.loskot.net