Listers, This is a little off topic, but I'm trying to see if there would be an interest in a very compressed (not zipped) form of elevation data. We have come up with a technique for compressing DEM's that brings file sizes down to about 127 KB per 1:24000 scale quad. To let you know, the native USGS DEM's are over 1 MB each and the STDS archiving method in my opinion is cumbersome to extract data from. We have also developed a DLL and API that would allow programmers to access the data in these quads programatically without having to decompress them, and we would offer a free translator to convert the quads into an ascii grid, x,y,z, tab, mif, mig or some other common format (but not back to native DEM) for those who just want the raw data and do not need it in a program. Additionally, the compression process detects and corrects the errors inherent in many of the native USGS quads. So the end product is a corrected quad at 1 tenth the original file size that doesn't require 3-4 steps to make it usable. Obviously, this is for the US only at the moment, but the compression technique could be used on any data in the world...we just don't happen to have access to that data. I'd be interested to hear any questions or comments about this.
Thanks, Cameron Crum --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 4710
