> > Yes, I see what you mean. But I suggest to the open source community > > that there is still value in implementing such features, either as > > part of OGR or another library, even if optimal performance cannot be > > guaranteed in all scenarios. > > Perhaps you'll find these inspiring: > > http://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/browser/trunk/qgis/src/analysis/vector
Thanks for the pointer. Yes those are inspiring, and also an example of what prompted me to raise this topic in the beginning. Those are examples of how QGIS implemented some basic geoprocessing with layers, e.g. intersect two layers, symdiff two layers, and so on. My reason for raising the topic is that each GIS has to reimplement those, and a lot of effort could be saved if there were a common library of such functions. I was hoping such a library already existed, and that I could draw from it (or even contribute to it) for some spatial ecology tools that my team will be implementing, with the goal of exposing these tools to multiple GIS programs, not just ArcGIS as we currently do. Many GIS projects support extensions. The authors realized the power of contributions from the community. This can get very powerful when the community converges on one program. For example, the R project has 2000 user-contributed packages. ArcGIS has thousands of user-contributed scripts and tools. The open GIS community has many different GISes. This is a good thing for various reasons, but it makes it hard for tool contributors to reach lots of users: they must reimplement their tool for each different GIS. If I pick QGIS then some users say "why not MapWindow"? Etc. It would be great if there was a library, similar to the R CRAN project, that I could contribute tools to without having to worry too much about all the interoperability plumbing required to get the tool working with multiple GISes. Perhaps I will try to start one. I'm already going to have to develop that plumbing for my own project anyway. Alternatively, is there one open source GIS that is accumulating all of the market share, so to speak? If QGIS, for example, is becoming the most popular then perhaps I could just pick it and ArcGIS, and not worry about the others. Anyway, thanks very much for your comments. They were very helpful. Jason _______________________________________________ gdal-dev mailing list gdal-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev
