[Qgis-user] Re: QGIS 1.5 Update for ECW/SID support crashes

[Paolo Cavallini]

Il 17/10/2010 22:00, Jürgen E. Fischer ha scritto:

>> Also, there are no plans (at the moment) to support ECW in GDAL >=
>> 1.7, which is bad news if you want to use QGIS >= 1.6.

> GDAL supports ECW[1] and in turn QGIS does.
> 
> It's just that it doesn't support the current SDK for legal reasons (AFAIK new
> restrictions and licensing issues) and requires the old one.  And the old SDK
> is not available _from ERDAS_ anymore.
> 
> And there is no ECW plugin for GDAL 1.7 in OSGeo4W and there is no intent to
> create one because of the above issues.  But it shouldn't be a problem to build
> one using the old SDK.
> 
> Moreover it has been repeatly stated that QGIS doesn't even require GDAL 1.7.
> It works fine with 1.6 (and even 1.5).  QGIS 1.5 in OSGeo4W and the standalone
> windows installer use GDAL 1.6 and there's nothing that forces us to switch to
> GDAL 1.7 with QGIS 1.6 - both ECW and MrSID are there already.

One good reason to switch to gdal 1.7 is the support for RasterLite.
Another is the bugfix with virtual raster that allows the removal of overlapping NULL
values. I'm sure there are more good reasons (after all, FrankW and other have not
worked in vain for a new GDAL version, right?).
More generally, I think we should upgrade wen possible, to profit from the many
improvements.
AFAICT, we are now trapped in a choice: either using gdal 1.6 with ECW support, but
with the limitations above, or move to 1.7, and drop ECW support (until the licence
issues are clarified/solved).
A third, more complicated way would be to have the two version in parallel.
I agree: I also feel lucky having to deal with proprietary formats only rarely.
All the best.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc