Importing ArcInfo files e00 format?

[Michel Wurtz - LTE]

[it seems this post never reached the grass mailing list]
[so here it is again...   thank you for your comments...]

Robert L. Sandefur wrote:
>
> Hi- I have had  problems with getting arc-info e00 files (particularily the binary ones) into
> anything.  However I found a document on the net some years ago that gave the format (I forget
> the url)of e00 files. I have a hard copy somewhere and could scan it and if there is interest.
> I asked arc info about conversion and they have a program which will convert e00 to simpler
> formats for about $1000 US for windows.
>
> bob sandefur

The reference of the net e00 description file is
"http://www.geocities.com/~vmushinskiy/fformats/files/e00.txt"

Since e00 is a proprietary format, there is some holes... and
the doc explains only ascii e00 file.  There is also binary e00 files,
where all information is still in ascii characters, but numbers
are in a compressed form (something like a ascii encoding of
binary numbers) which is not understandable.  This appears much
more a encryption method than a space saving utility (the compression
ratio is pretty low)

I successfully imported an e00 file in grass ascii files with
(all following) :
   - manual editing (with vi and ex global editing commands)
   - perl scripts
   - some little C "kleenex" (throw them after use :-) programs
   - editing inside grass

I didn't wrote an import tool, because I had a very little data
set, but I need more and more something to read e00 file, so I
began to write a very basic rv.in.e00 grass program which
can import ESRI vector and grid formats.

I have some program pieces to do that, and I'm encouraged by the
fact this can be usefull for more peoples than myself only :-)

The problem is that e00 files contains many informations that must
be splitted in differents files (vector geometry and attribute
tables, raster data, color sheme, etc...) and maybe used for import
control (like datum and projection information)

I plan to keep the Arc-Info coordinates, but display projections infos,
create vector and raster files and split attributes files in grass cat
files... (I hope to have a pre-pre-pre-under-alpha version for mid
september)

Any suggestions ?   are others trying to do the same ?

-- 
Michel Wurtz    ENGEES - Laboratoire Territoires & Environnement
                1, quai Koch - BP 1039, F-67070 STRASBOURG cedex
                Tel: +33 03.88.25.34.62  Fax: +33 03.88.37.04.97