On Jan 30, 2008 10:59 AM, Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand@nhh.no> wrote:

>
> ...

If SAGA can make a source library for reading and writing its raster file
> formats available to GDAL, and maybe help write a driver, SAGA access
> through rgdal will happen automatically. Lots of other projects do this,
> for example, the PCRaster format is included as source in the GDAL source.
> Were SAGA to split out the raster I/O as a library and provide a copy to
> GDAL, your question would be answered. SAGA does use GDAL for interfacing
> other formats, and would be a "good citizen" if they reciprocated.
>

In fact, there is a module that imports and exports to GDAL in SAGA. It's
code is rather simple, and I believe that bringing it to GDAL should not be
a major issue. The SAGA format is nothing else than yet another binary
gridfile with some kind of world-file attached to it. I've had the idea to
bring this format in gdal for quite some time (in fact I once wrote a now
obsolete export to gdal module for SAGA which I never released because I
still wanted to tweak it(and the hyperfocus was gone...)). I'll cross-check
with the saga-developers to see if somebody else is working on a
gdal-implementation, and I might give it a try.

In the meantime I use R and SAGA frequently, and I just export to geotiff,
which both programs read and write well. I didn't try RSAGA yet, but I see
no reason why that's not possible.

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