[gdal-dev] How to know which formats allow editing with ogrinfo?

[Eli Adam]

On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 9:55 AM Even Rouault <even.rouault at spatialys.com> wrote:
>
> > The old driver pages
> > (https://web.archive.org/web/20190211030817/https://www.gdal.org/ogr_formats
> > .html) were tables that very effectively conveyed the capabilities (or
> > limitations) of the drivers and allowed for scanning for drivers that
> > had the capabilities that you wanted.
>
> The information in individual pages is roughly the same as in the global
> table.
>
> > Would a similar table be possible or desirable?
>
> A few people have indeed noted the absence of the table. Not sure if this is
> usual "resistance to change" phenomenon or if there is there really a strong
> use case for "I don't want which format to use: let's look at the summary page
> to select one".

I've certainly found myself shopping for a format with that table.
Usually some middle format in an ETL toolchain, sometimes complicated
by cross platform considerations for driver availability.

>
> If so, then yes if someone contributes it, that'd be welcome. However I think
> we'd want it to be generated from a Python script from the individual .rst
> pages, by parsing the directives like ".. supports_create::" that are in those
> .rst files. That way that would make maintainance of the summary easier (and
> initial version less tidious that doing that manually)

Contributing it as a python script is an opportunity for someone other
than me.
>
> > There are a few things that might be missing.  The new page has
> > https://gdal.org/programs/raster_common_options.html#raster-common-options
> > and
> > https://gdal.org/programs/vector_common_options.html#vector-common-options
> > I wonder if a list of uncommon options like this would be helpful,
> > https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/ConfigOptions?
>
> Migrating the wiki page to the doc could be useful. My own opinion is that
> driver specific configuration options should be documented in the driver
> specific page, rather than in a global config option page. Same with /vsi

I'll try moving some of these over and see how it goes.

> specific options that should go to
> https://gdal.org/user/virtual_file_systems.html if not already there.
>
> Or if a global list is needed, I'd say a bit the same as for driver summaries,
> have a way to compile the list of options from .rst files where they would be
> mention and link from the summary to the actual page. But we don't have
> currently any explicit directive for configuration options.

I'll start with driver specific.

Thanks, Eli

>
> > I was also curious to see if the OSGeo technical writing project would
> > impact any of the documentation.
>
> There was initial discussion but no follow-up as far as GDAL is concerned.
>
> Even
>
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