[gdal-dev] KMZ Support in OGR?

[Michael Ashbridge]

All,

I'm one of the authors of libkml. I'm more than happy to answer any
questions you have.

To address some issues from the thread:

- We chose the BSD license specifically to ensure maximum
compatibility with as many other licenses as possible, and to allow
maximum possible flexibility of use.

- By itself zlib doesn't buy you zipfile/kmz support. We use the
contributed minizip code. Our KMZ support right now is minimal. As
Christopher hints, KMZ is more than just a zip-archive KML file. In
the coming weeks and months, we'll flesh out (in code) precisely what
"kmz support" really means.

- Indeed, as it says in our documentation, v0.1 is not intended for
use in production – although I would encourage everyone to experiment
and comment.

- Michael

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 8:53 PM, Christopher Condit <condit at sdsc.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Here's the other problem I have with making KMZ's directly from OGR. Often,
> users will want to include auxiliary files for icons, etc in the kmz
> archive. As soon as we start zipping KML output I'm worried we'll have to
> introduce some provision to include these files in the final output….
>
>
>
> -Chris
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Simon Perkins [mailto:sy at perkins.net]
>  Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2008 13:48
>  To: Christopher Condit
>  Cc: Brian Hamlin; gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org
>
>  Subject: Re: [gdal-dev] KMZ Support in OGR?
>
>
>
>
> Well, all very salient points. I particularly liked the link to Joel
> Spolsky's article. Should be required reading for all programmers!
>
>  But a couple of comments anyway...
>
>
>  *) Google's libkml is not yet production ready
>
>
>
> Fair enough - I haven't used it. But my hope would be that if Google is
> going to be using this in Google Earth then it should get up to speed pretty
> darn quickly. Of course, I'm not sure they've said that...
>
>
>  *) Once the KML 2.2 spec is approved by OGC I expect it to be rather
> stable, so I'm not sure that switching to libkml for an evolving
> standard is really going to buy OGR much.
>
>
>
>
>  Another good point. To be honest my interest is more in seeing the few
> flaws I've discovered fixed than anything else. If it's easier to fix the
> current driver then that's probably the way to go.
>
>
>  *) It would probablybe trivial to add kmz support, but as Brian
> suggested why not just pipe the file to a zip command?
>
>
>
>
>  Well, that's fine if you're just trying to lash something together
> specifically for KML files on a linux system, but not so great if you're
> developing, say, commercial windows software that has to deal with lots of
> different formats. As I see it the whole point of an abstraction layer like
> GDAL/OGR is that you shouldn't have to care about the intricacies of
> particular data formats. So if your users are going to be trying to load KMZ
> files (the Google Earth default format) into your application, it would be
> much nicer if OGR could just do its job and read those files without you
> having to special case things. No?
>
>
>  Sy
>
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: gdal-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
> [mailto:gdal-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Simon Perkins
> Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2008 12:16
> To: Brian Hamlin
> Cc: gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: Re: [gdal-dev] KMZ Support in OGR?
>
> Brian Hamlin wrote:
>
>
> <flame>You say you think it would be a great idea to add a new library
>
>
>
>
> in place of most of the driver that is there, but dont have time
> and/or ability to make a wiki page about that as a proposed
> project?</flame>
>
>
> Well, that at least is one thing I have the time to fix... I've added an
>
> enhanced KML driver using the Google library to the GDAL SoC ideas page.
>
> Feel free to edit!
>
> http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/SummerOfCode
>
> Cheers,
>
> Simon
>
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