[Liblas-devel] Re: liblas svn and gdal/ogr

[Mateusz Loskot]

Jeff Hamann wrote:
> Mateusz,
> 
> I noticed the migration of the liblas project from Subversion to 
> Mercurial. Can we still check out the code using svn?

Jeff,

I'm not sure. Hobu?

> Also, I wondered what's the status of integrating the liblas code
> into the gdal/ogr project?

There is no such status as it has never been planned.

> Or at least being able to build a gdal/ogr driver for lidar data?

It is possible to write LAS driver for GDAL using libLAS
in the same way as it was possible to develop GeoTIFF driver
for GDAL using libtiff and libgeotiff libraries.

The idea of libLAS driver for GDAL/OGR has been discussed shortly:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2008-May/037695.html
http://mateusz.loskot.net/2009/02/07/using-liblas-with-grass/

It is not trivial and number of questions raised:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2008-May/037726.html

(you may want to walk through the whole thread).

Basically, what is LiDAR data?
IMO, it's more of raster nature in form of vector.

p.s. Please, post to liblas-devel so others have chance to participate.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
Charter Member of OSGeo, http://osgeo.org