More features like open source Python GIS please
An ESRI user shares his software wish list:
3. Expose numpy in the geoprocessor: The geoprocessor as is right now (9.3.1) uses the excellent numpy module to perform matrix algebra (think of raster manipulation). Yet, when one wishes to run numpy commands, one needs to manually read raster files with GDAL, import them as numpy arrays (default), perform operations, and translate back to raster. ESRI must have modules for dealing with this, and we want them. Why would ESRI want to do this? Right now, raster manipulation through Python is done outside the geoprocessor. Most people turn to open source tools to manipulate data, which leads to less and less users relying on ESRI for this. Why pay when free software will do it? The capability is there, and we need to access it too.
Fewer and fewer users relying on ESRI for this? You say that like it's a bad thing.
Comments
Re: More features like open source Python GIS please
Author: Kay
ESRI already uses GDAL and Numpy, if they would just create a Driver for their GeoDatabases in GDAL/OGR and release it to the gdal-community. Then they could distribute GDAL/OGR-python with their product and all their users would have the power of gdal-numpy available without having to install extra software.
And FOSS-people would be able to use FGDB's.
Everyone Happy.
Re: More features like open source Python GIS please
Author: Sean
An open source GDB driver would make a lot of people happy, but that's not what I'm getting at here. My point is that ESRI users are looking at the features (GDAL, Numpy, etc) and usability (Python) of open source software and wondering "why can't we have more of that?"