[FWTools] Documentation and delivery of REC, GRASS, GPX, GML and Interlis drivers

[Stefan Keller]

Frank,

I'm referring to your thread and Bryan Keith's post about "FWTools
2.0.0Released": Frank made a great job especially also with OGR and I'
trying to
promote and use it.

Regarding documentation and features of the OGR (incl. OGR2OGR) tools I have
following hints and questions, especially also to outreach it to Windows
users:

* The REC driver (read-only) is mentioned in ogr2ogr but I don't find any
documentation about it as a source/format.

* GRASS is mentioned in the Web documentation (
http://www.gdal.org/ogr/ogr_formats.html) without reading/writing
availability restrictions - but it doesn't work either (at least on my
Windows installations).

* GPX writing: The Web documenation says: "OGR has support for GPX reading
(if GDAL is build with expat library support) and writing." From this,
reading is not optional; so the following should work - but doesn't: $
ogrinfo -ro -al test.gpx

* Reading two of the most prominent formats from GPS and GIS, namely GPX and
GML, are not part of the main distribution of FWTools (GPX needs expat
library and GML Xerces). And Interlis needs a jar (ili2c.jar) from
elsewhere. I understand the argument not to keep components apart. On the
other side, this means, that Windows users are practically excluded from
using these features. => Is it difficult for those who maintain the build
scripts anyway to compose a Windows release as it is now together with one
which *includes* these three libraries?

* Finally one question about perhaps the most well known "GIS/CAD" formats
ever: DXF file reading is currently not supported. To be sure not to begin
redundant activities: Are there plans to enhance that?

Yours, Stefan
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