ECW support gdal 1.7

[gespiel]

Hi,

have installed 1.5.0 rel. 143 (codestand 13912M) from OSGeo4W. Starting Qgis, it appears a message, that gdal 1.7 is necessary. Installing 1.7 manually from osgeo4W repository, Qgis starts proberly. With gdal 1.7 some new vectors are possible, p.E. Autocad dxf. Thats verry good! Unfortunately, Raster plugins for ecw and Mr SID aren`t availible. Is there a chance to get the plugin for gdal 1.7 with the necessaary dll-files.

[jef]

This is not a QGIS bug. And support for MrSID and python is also planned (see ​http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/osgeo4w-dev/2010-July/000991.html). Not sure about ECW. Anyway as soon as GDAL supports it, QGIS will use it, so this isn't a original QGIS problem.

[warmerdam]

Erdas no longer distributes the ECW SDK DLLs required by the GDAL ECW Plugin. As such, I am hesitant to try and provide an ECW plugin for GDAL 1.7 as only people who already happen to have the DLL will be able to use it.

Essentially, at the action of Erdas ECW support in OSGeo4W has become deprecated. It might make sense for us (ie. me) to approach Erdas about alternate arranagements, but it is not high on my priority list.

[lutra]

But Erdas is not releasing a new version of the ecw sdk as stated here?

​http://www.erdas.com/Products/ERDASDownloads/tabid/192/currentid/3578/objectid/3578/default.aspx

I believe that without ecw support many people will not be happy, after all most of the new/potential QGIS/GRASS users ask immediately "do the program supports ecw rasters?". I know, it is sad.

[warmerdam]

Lutra,

Perhaps we can revisit the issue if/when Erdas offers their new 4.x SDK and see how involved the process is. I hadn't realized it was not even available yet.