[gdal-dev] Re: OziExplorer (ozf2) Files with GDAL?

[Jukka Rahkonen]

Oliver Eichler <oliver.eichler <at> gmx.de> writes:> 
 
> AFAIK the ozi format is just referencing information to a bitmap stored in a 
> known format like jpeg, png or tiff. Thus using gdal_translate is not that 
> obscure to me.

Hi,

Not quite so. OziExplorer .map file it doing that, pointing out to the image
file and giving projection, datum and set of reference points for OziExplorer
moving map program.  Ozf is a special file format tailored for OziExplorer and
it is the only format supported by PDA version OziExplorer. It is having tiles,
colour palette and overviews, all good things in getting speed and low memory
need. Unfortunately it is not documented, but my guess is that tiles are pngs.
This is what the author of OziExplorer writes:

What is the OZFx3 Image Format

The OZFx3 format stores the image in tiles, each tile can be manipulated as a
single unit.
Advantages
    * Contains a separate image for each zoom level for 25% and below. These
zoom levels are created using a bilinear filter and look good.
    * Zooms of 90, 80, 75, 70, 60, 50, and 40% are created by OziExplorer and
OziExplorerCE using a bilinear filter giving good looking smooth zooms.
    * Fast Initial Loading
    * Small memory requirement when loaded
    * The loaded tiles can be cached in memory, this allows the OZFx3 format to
be efficiently used on slow Windows CE PDA's.

-Jukka Rahkonen-