[R-sig-Geo] read function for LAS data

[Howard Butler]

On Jun 7, 2010, at 7:41 PM, Michael Sumner wrote:
> 
> BTW, I don't want this example to be seen as some kind of snub to the
> efforts of projects like liblas, I'm really interested in the fact
> that it *can* be done - not necessarily pushing that it should be
> done. The impetus here was really my interest in alternative methods,
> not just avoiding dependencies.

I didn't take it as a snub, but rather I was firing back with a warning at how deep this LAS rabbit hole actually goes :)  After first reading the spec, I thought, "oh a nice simple binary format, I can write code for that."    It seems everyone else thought the same as well, and we all came back with different answers.  Over time, I hope the bigger vendors pick up libLAS internally (one or two large commercial vendors and a number of mid-level ones now use libLAS), so the variations in data start to go away.  I've given them every possible reason to take it up too -- BSD license, loads of features, multiple APIs, multiple platforms, not slow.