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

[Ramon Andinach]

On 18/10/2010, at 17:26 , Agustin Lobo wrote:

> Unfortunately, having to deal with ECW is not a matter of being maniacs
> of proprietary formats but of many useful free geoinformation provided in
> ECW format. Actually, not having ECW (or mrsid) support can be a cause
> of not using qgis at all.

This is precisely my problem. Too much of the available imagery that I use is available only as ECW. Not being able to view ecw data would drive me away from a program that I've only just discovered and am really enjoying using.

> What about designing a separate external tool that would use gdal 1.6
> for a fast conversion
> of ECW to a fully gdal 1.7 supported compressed format? This would be
> a temporary solution while
> gdal finds a better solution for ECW support (best) or while ECW is
> dropped by producers
> of public geodata.

I could however live with this. Painful, but I could work with this.

-ramon.