[gdal-dev] gdal_merge.py outputs bad geotiff?

[Andrew Brooks]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:21:22 +0100, Even Rouault <even.rouault at mines-paris.org> wrote:

> my guess is that your merged1.tif TIFF has areas which are not initialized
> (black/transparent areas). gdal_merge.py probably doesn't write any data in
> them, thus leading to missing blocks in the file.

Thanks for the reply, that certainly seems to be the explanation.  It does
raise further questions though.

1. Should the gdal utilities' output be consistent with each other?
2. Should the default output format be the most compatible?
3. Should there be an option to turn on/off the writing of sparse files?

Andrew