[R-sig-Geo] Spatial data tower of babel

[Robert J. Hijmans]

I think that such a package would be very useful. It could have a
single function like

convert(x, 'AnotherClass')

The package would only need to depend on sp, all the other packages
would be "suggested" such that you do not need to install the packages
you do not use.

Robert


On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Barry Rowlingson
<b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Edzer Pebesma
> <edzer.pebesma at uni-muenster.de> wrote:
>> Barry, what exactly did you try out before you posted?
>>
>> Your claim is not completely true: geoR has a function
>> as.geodata.SpatialPointsDataFrame, so you can do, for instance:
>>
>> library(geoR)
>> data(meuse) # from sp
>> coordinates(meuse) = ~x+y
>> krige.bayes(as.geodata(meuse, "zinc"))
>>
>> and its locations argument can be a SpatialPoints object.
>
> Well, I didnt claim these functions didnt exist, nor did I point out
> that some are trivial - ie to get from a SpatialPointsDataFrame to a
> set of locations for, say, splancs' K-function, you just do
> coordinates(foo). What I was hoping for was that we could create a
> single point where these conversions could be collected, which would
> be an almost authoritative source of conversions.
>
>  geoR has SpatialPointsDataFrame to geodata - but does it have the
> other way round too? Or is that in sp? It doesn't matter too much,
> since students will find them either way, but does
> as.sp(as.geodata('meuse","zinc")) get you back where you started?
> That's what students may expect. Conversion is a big headache for new
> users and anything that makes it easier is a plus. Imagine doing
> vignette(spBabel) and getting a whole list of what formats can be
> converted together with caveats and restrictions - sounds good to me.
>
>  Obviously the problems are in maintainance and keeping conversions up
> to date with any changes in the format in the main package, as well as
> that this package would probably depend on all the other packages...
>
>  Idle coffee-time thoughts...
>
> Barry
>
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