[gdal-dev] Resquest for comments (RFC 36)

[Even Rouault]

> 
> I think we want a syntax that can easily be entered by a user at the
> command line, or in the text field of a desktop or web user interface.
> That definitely rules out exotic characters, and ideally we'd lean
> towards a simpler syntax.

For a desktop user interface, *ideally*, I think the user should not even know 
how it is formatted. He would select a filename in a file browser, and have a 
drop-down list "Format" with the following values "Autodetected (by default), 
GeoTIFF, Imagine, ...." with the driver long names rather than the short 
names. Then the application would combine the filename with the value from the 
drop-down list to format it to whatever syntax we will decide (or if we decide 
to create a new GDALOpenXXX() that takes a driver name as an extra argument, 
it will call it). The point is that the syntax should only matter to the 
people using command line utilities.

But when thinking to that a bit more, embedding the driver name rather than 
providing a new GDALOpenXXX() has clearly an advantage for the VRT or 
gdaltindex cases. The format of those files would not require any change to 
take advantage of the "fast open" new capability.

There's a small issue however to be able to build those files in a user 
friendly way. Currently, a common use case is to issue : "gdaltindex 
mytileindex.shp *.tif" or "gdalbuildvrt my.vrt *.tif"

But, you will not be able to issue : "gdaltindex mytileindex.shp GTiff:*.tif" 
or "gdalbuildvrt my.vrt GTiff:*.tif"

Well, you could, but then the utilities would have to do the listing of the 
directory by themselves, instead of relying on the shell to do the wildcard 
expansion. So perhaps for those utilities a new option would be necessary so 
that the utility can combine the filename with the driver name : "gdaltindex 
mytileindex.shp *.tif -driver GTiff" or "gdalbuildvrt my.vrt *.tif -driver 
GTiff"