[SoC] SoC idea

[Wolf Bergenheim]

On 27.03.2009 19:50, Tim Keitt wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I was just talking to potential SoC student. He has a pretty extensive
> programming background and is now studying geography. I'd be
> interested in your feedback on the following idea: it seems one of the
> things that is sorely needed in the FOSS4G world is the ability to
> generate and manipulate various meshes and tessellations. I'm thinking
> of perhaps a gdal2ogr tool that would convert raster data to vector
> representations (points, polygons, tin, etc.). I could see this as
> part of the GDAL/OGR library. Or perhaps there is more need to allow
> one to store and manipulate meshes in PostGIS? I realize there is some
> capability in GRASS and some overlap with eg Starspan
> (http://starspan.casil.ucdavis.edu/doku/doku.php). It would be nice
> however to have stand-alone capability not tied to eg GRASS for those
> that a simple command line utility. Anyway, I'd be interested in folks
> have specific thoughts about whether this would be useful and what
> direction to proceed.
> 

Hi Tim,

While there is indeed that capability in GRASS etc I think it might be
good to have a GDAL raster-vector-raster converter. Which would then
make it possible to convert between OGR and GDAL formats(?), which would
be very cool. The GRASS modules are quite good (but then I'm biased),
and could probably be partially used for inspiration, which makes me
hope that it would be possible to make a converter, which would work in
both directions. So IMHO you should proceed. This could then later maybe
be used by the Cartographic library?

Mesh support for PostGIS would also be very interesting, which could
then be used maybe in the pgRouting project?

So maybe ask if the student could make two proposals so that we can then
think it over (it will give us a few more days to debate this ;))

--Wolf

-- 

<:3 )---- Wolf Bergenheim ----( 8:>