MI SDTS format - Dragon Slayers Wanted (fwd)

[Michel Wurtz - ENGEES/CEREG]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 
> Rich Shepard wrote:
> >
> >   Anyone with the time, knowledge and interest to work on a data translator?
> > This would be a tremendous benefit to the GRASS community as well as those
> > folks still stuck in MapInfo and the like.
[...]
> 
> Third, from having done the v.in.shape module for GRASS, I learned that I don't
> quite get the GRASS data model for vectors.  In particular, what the
> appropriate way is to associate multiple attribute fields with vectors.  If
> there is someone who needs SDTS data, and is willing to work with me on it,
> that would help alot.

Hello Frank and Rich,

I'm not familiar with SDTS, but have worked with the people who developped
EDIGeO, which is a french equivalent of SDTS. I presume that like any other
Norm, this kind of data exchange format must take in account every little
trick of every proprietary format, so it becomes a huge and unimplementable
mess that is of course not widely used (high price and complexity of
available implementations).  I speak mainly about EDIGeO.  I trust more
SDTS because I believe US people are more pragmatic than French ones :-)

Besides, I think the real problem with Grass vector format is the lack of
a good database interface for storing and managing attributes data.

I'm actually finishing (and hope to publish it for Christmas) a new
version of m.in.e00 for Grass5.0 (some bug corrected, float
grid format supported, and compressed format directly read).
My only problem is "how to have a better attribute support than
to spread all of them in a lot of cat files ?".  Gdabse, MySQL or
Postgress : what is the best for Grass community ?
Is there an "official" answer from Baylor people ?

I think that all of us who develop data translator programs must
have the same approach and work together for the multiple attribute
fields problem, and synchronize with Baylor development team.

Any answer or suggestion ?

BTW, I plan to write a v.out.e00 function : does this interest
someone ? (apart Markus, who suggested this to me some... hmmm...
months ago :-)

Best regards,

-- 
Michel Wurtz    ENGEES - CEREG
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                Tel: +33 03.88.24.82.45  Fax: +33 03.88.37.04.97