[Liblas-devel] LAS 1.3

[Howard Butler]

is gonna kick our ass.  https://lidarbb.cr.usgs.gov/index.php?showtopic=6385

Specifically, a number of header and VLR sizes are now going to be  
uint64_t's rather that uint32_t's.  grr....

The committee doesn't pay attention to libLAS (I think they should as  
an open reference implementation, but that's another story), so if we  
have any comments about the spec, we should collate them together, and  
I will send them on.  I have been working to get myself added to the  
committee so that I can participate in future specs, but it looks like  
we're going to have to eat this one whole :(

Changes that look to really suck for us:

- Scan Angle Rank goes away from all point record formats and its type  
changes from int8_t to uint8_t and it gets called Point Type Flags.
- They're now going to allow the storage of up to 7 returns.  Our  
software has 5 baked in everywhere.
- VLR record lengths, offset to point data and a few other things are  
going to uint64_t, but the number of points in the file isn't (I think  
this is dumb -- if we're incurring this pain, we might as well do it  
now).
- Classification is changing yet again
- oh, and the waveform stuff :)

If you have a chance, and care, please take a look at the spec and  
think about how its changes and the changes libLAS would need to  
reflect the spec would impact your life :)

Howard