[Qgis-community-team] WhiteboxTools geospatial data analysis engine

[John Lindsay]

Hello QGISers,

Please note, I intended to submit the following to the Developers mail group, but I think that access to that site is restricted. Hopefully someone on the core development team will read this.

I am the lead developer of an open-source GIS called Whitebox GAT<http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hydrogeo/Whitebox/index.html>. I frequently get requests from users who want to access Whitebox GAT's plugin tools from outside of the software and to incorporate these tools into other geospatial projects. Admittedly, this has never been very easy in the past, in large part owing to the fact that Whitebox GAT was largely developed using Java, but also due to the architecture of the project. I have recently started to port Whitebox GAT's many tools into a stand-alone command-line application called WhiteboxTools<http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hydrogeo/software.shtml#WhiteboxTools>. This small library already contains about 250 tools for processing raster and LiDAR data sets (Whitebox GAT has about 450 tools--much work remains). I have developed WhiteboxTools using the Rust programming language, a low-level systems language that is efficient and safe (without use of garbage collection). The project uses a permissive MIT open-source license. I'm not sure if there is any interest in incorporating any or all of the tools contained in WhiteboxTools as a toolbox in QGIS, but I thought that I would make you aware of the possibility. I welcome any feedback or questions you may have.

As an aside, thank you for all of your efforts. I am well aware of the monumental efforts that your team must have made to make QGIS what it is today. Well done!

Best regards,


John Lindsay, PhD

Room 346, Hutt Building,

Department of Geography,

The University of Guelph,

E-mail: jlindsay at uoguelph.ca

Phone: (519) 824-4120 ext. 56074

Web: http://www.uoguelph.ca/geography/faculty/lindsay-john

Research page: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hydrogeo/

Whitebox GAT: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hydrogeo/Whitebox/index.html
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