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

[Frank Warmerdam]

Stefan Keller wrote:
> Frank,
>  
> I'm referring to your thread and Bryan Keith's post about "FWTools 2.0.0 
> Released": 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.

Stefan,

This is a special purpose format that is not of wide interest.  I am not
keen on documenting it.

> * 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).

FWTools does not support GRASS.  libgrass is under the GPL and FWTools
includes GPL incompatible software (such as MrSID), so I had to
choose either the GRASS driver or non-free drivers.  I chose the
non-free drivers.

> * 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

The GPX support is very new, perhaps it was introduced after the last
FWTools release?  I see FWTools is built against expat (at least on
linux) and so we can reasonably expect GPX support.  Hmm, I think expat
is missing on windows (other than the expat for OGDI) so I'm not sure
what will happen there.

> * 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). 

I believe FWTools on windows and linux includes Xerces and thus full
GML support.

 > And Interlis needs a jar (ili2c.jar) from elsewhere.

I'm not adverse to distributing ili2c.jar with FWTools, but I
don't distribute a Java interpreter so I think it would be of
limited value.

 > 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?

I'm starting to wonder if you are mixing up the "stock" GDAL DLLs
distributed from download.osgeo.org, and FWTools.  FWTools is not
maintained by "those", but just by me.   And it does have GML and
hopefully will include GPX.

> * 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?

There is currently no support for reading DXF and I am not aware of anyone
working on this.  The existing DXFDWG driver is likely to be removed from
GDAL/OGR since it includes some source code directly adapted from the
open design alliance code base.

An MIT/X DXF read/writer without dependencies on external libraries would
be a valuable addition to GDAL/OGR.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org