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

[Michael Sumner]

Thanks Howard, I appreciate the perspective.

> "oh a nice simple binary format, I can write code for that."

Heh - yes indeed this is an attractive pit.

Cheers, Mike.

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Howard Butler <hobu.inc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
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