[gdal-dev] Multiple extensions in GDAL_DMD_EXTENSION ?

[Frank Warmerdam]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 6:30 AM, Etienne Tourigny
<etourigny.dev at gmail.com> wrote:
> Frank,
>
> thanks for you thorough response.
>
> I agree that GDAL's detection is rather efficient, but sometimes it
> can be relatively slow when scanning many files in a GUI.
>
> This is admittedly a worst-case scenario, but is the reason why I
> chose to optionally scan files by extension (rather than content) in
> QGis - this can be enabled for specific directories.
>
>>
>> One other use that extensions are used for is to make it easy for a
>> user to filter down files in a file browser to just one format.  I
>> can't think of any time I've found this useful.  But with GDAL there
>> are so many formats that these "list of formats" filter dohickyies are
>> usually completely unusable.
>
> Applications tend to have these, with ad-hoc rules for formats which
> use various extensions (e.g. the QGis raster open dialog). This would
> be simpler and more unified if extensions are reported by GDAL.
>
> In short, I'd support a new GDAL_DMD_EXTENSION_LIST that supplements
> existing GDAL_DMD_EXTENSION . I could commit such a feature in the
> netcdf driver and gdalinfo output and update the docs if you agree.

Etienne,

If you would like the broader set of developers to maintain this list for
new drivers, then I'd encourage you to write up a brief RFC and go
through the discuss/vote process.

As mentioned, I'm not keen but I'm not going to block it.  If an RFC
is passed, I'll even make an effort to maintain this metadata for
drivers I work on.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Software Developer