Hi all, A simple parseable header definitely sounds nice, though I'd share Martin's concerns about a bullet hole in our feet re: creating a first class text based LIDAR format.
+1 to parseable --header-only and --data-only outputs though, for interoperability purposes. On 25/11/10 01:07, Angley, William [USA] wrote: > * On the flip side, being able to transform .las data into GML > or KML formats would be extremely helpful at times. Among other > things, this would allow for the display of LiDAR data in Google > Earth and via MapServer. This would be a very nice thing to have, though it's probably a separate thread :) > a file format design issue. The combination of simple, open > standards that I've suggested (YAML + tab-separated values) is Just a note but, as I understand it, YAML parsers blow up when you feed them anything with tabs, so one would have to programmatically prune the header from the data (assuming it's in one stream ; two streams would be fine). > I don't know how well it would work in general use, but it seems > worthwhile to note that word processing file formats have been > evolving in this direction for some time. Both OpenDocument Format > and Office Open XML are compressed, structured text successors to > binary file formats. I'd echo Martin's comment that text files aren't very efficient for storage (unless compressed) but they're also very bad for random access (which compression makes worse). Even a few minutes of an aircraft flying produces hundreds of MB of binary data (approximately doubles in conversion to ASCII, for discrete data). All the indications are that that'll get bigger in the next few years - full waveform (will increase the multiplier), higher pulse rates, etc. Cheers, Mike. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plymouth Marine Laboratory Registered Office: Prospect Place The Hoe Plymouth PL1 3DH Website: www.pml.ac.uk Registered Charity No. 1091222 PML is a company limited by guarantee registered in England & Wales company number 4178503 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail, its content and any file attachments are confidential. If you have received this e-mail in error please do not copy, disclose it to any third party or use the contents or attachments in any way. Please notify the sender by replying to this e-mail or e-mail [email protected] and then delete the email without making any copies or using it in any other way. The content of this message may contain personal views which are not the views of Plymouth Marine Laboratory unless specifically stated. You are reminded that e-mail communications are not secure and may contain viruses. Plymouth Marine Laboratory accepts no liability for any loss or damage which may be caused by viruses. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Liblas-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/liblas-devel
