[R-sig-Geo] Standard Geo-Spatial Format for R

[Roger Bivand]

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, Hisaji Ono wrote:

> Hello.
> 
>  I have a plan to create R interface Package for Refraction's "nice" GOES.
> 
>  In doing this, I'd like to know there's any plan to make Standard
> Geo-Spatial Objects Format for R geo-space communities? Because current
> available R's map packages' formats seems to be various and each
> independent, so passing data will require to create each  export function
> among packages.
> 
>  Does anyone know?

Not really. I think what we have is a layered structure with the analysis 
packages doing their own things - this is reviewed in my presentation at 
DSC03: 

http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/Conferences/DSC-2003/Proceedings/Bivand.pdf

What we have on the other end are interface packages and bindings like 
Rmap, GDAL, maptools, shapefiles, RArcInfo, and other ad-hoc ways of 
reading files, together with Albrecht Gebhardt's look at PostGIS - see the 
Rgeo website. 

Then come Edzer Pebesma's spatial classes in the middle, they seem to me
to be exactly the kinds of abstract containers that the interfaces need to
be able to write to and read from, and then the analysis packages can
either convert to using them directly, or use them through methods as
Barry Rowlingson suggested. Could we try to write a draft specification 
for this and put it on the website, I think this a lot to be gained by 
thinking aloud about this. 

Thanks for bringing this up, I agree that GEOS is worth following up, and 
would be very useful if matched to the SpatialCls package.

Roger

> 
>  Regards.
> 
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-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 93 93
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no