[Gdal-dev] Surfer binary grids support

[Joaquim Luis]

Ionut Iordache wrote:
> Greetings,
> I'm trying to use GDAL under Solaris 8 to convert Surfer 8 binary 
> grids (or even ASCII) to ArcInfo floating point grids (.hdr and .flt 
> files).
> I don't know whether the Surfer 7 format (GS7BG, advertised as 
> supported for reading in GDAL) is the same as what Surfer 8 outputs, 
> but I wanted give it a shot.
> My problem is that I can't find support for any of the Surfer grids 
> formats in the downloaded version of the GDAL 1.4.1.0 source code.
> The directory "gdal/frmts/gsg" is simply missing from the source tree 
> and after compiling and installing from source, "--formats" doesn't 
> list any Surfer formats as being supported.
>
> So, my question is two-fold:
> - what version of the GDAL source code I need to download in order to 
> get the Surfer driver code, and
> - does anyone know if my Surfer 8 binary grids would be readable by 
> the GS7BG driver ?
>

Ionut,
I don't know the answer to your GDAL specific questions but let me help 
clarify some issues

1. There is no such format as Surfer 8. What exist is the old binary 
(floats) and a new (since Surfer 7) one made with doubles
and potentially complicated when it contain breaklines.

2. Surfer is a Windows only software and its formats use native binaries 
which means that you'll risk to have a problem
of endianess with Solaris.

3. If you want to try it, GMT recognizes Surfer 6 and a simplified form 
(eg, no breaklines) of Surfer 7 grids (thins one as read only).

Joaquim Luis