GDAL/OGR 1.3.0 Released

Folks,

At last, the GDAL/OGR 1.3.0 final release is out there.  

  http://www.gdal.org/dl/gdal-1.3.0.tar.gz
  http://www.gdal.org/dl/gdal130.zip

From the NEWS file:

GDAL 1.3.0 - Overview of Changes
--------------------------------

Multithreading:
 - Lots of work done to implement support for multiple threads reading
   from distinct GDALDataset objects at the same time. 

GDALRasterBand / Persistant Auxilary Metadata (PAM):
 - Support for preserving a variety of metadata in a supporting XML file. 
 - GDALRasterBand now supports "remembering" histograms, and has a concept
   of the default histogram. 
 - GDALRasterBand now supports remembering image statistics.
 - Disabled by default (set GDAL_PAM_ENABLED=YES to turn on). 
 - Supported by *most* drivers with some caveats.

GDALCopyWords(): 
 - This function is a low level work horse for copying and converting pixel 
   data in GDAL.  It has been substantially optimized by Steve Soule (Vexcel).

Next Generation Bindings:
 - Kevin Ruland and Howard Butler are working on reworked support for 
   SWIG to generate Python, PHP, Java, C# and other language bindings for GDAL
   and OGR. 

VB6 Bindings: 
 - Now substantially complete, see VB6 directory.

HDF5 Driver: 
 - New HDF5 driver implemented by Denis Nadeau. 

RMF Driver: 
 - New driver for Raster Matrix Format by Andrey Kislev. 

MSGN (Meteosat Second Generation Native) Driver:
 - New driver implemented by Frans van der Bergh.

VRT Driver:
 - Fixed whopper of a memory leak in warped raster case.

NetCDF Driver: 
 - Preliminary CF conventions support by Denis Nadeau.

NITF Driver:
 - NITF files between 2 and 4 GB in size can now be read and written.

JPEG Driver: 
 - Added support for reading EXIF as metadata by Denis Nadeau.

DODS Driver:
 - Fixed up libdap 3.5.x compatibility.

JP2ECW (JPEG2000 ECW SDK) Driver:
 - Implemented support for new GML-in-JPEG2000 specification.
 - Implemented support for old MSI "worldfile" box. 

JP2KAK (JPEG2000 Kakadu) Driver:
 - Implemented support for new GML-in-JPEG2000 specification.
 - Implemented support for old MSI "worldfile" box. 

PCIDSK Driver: 
 - tiled files now supported for reading.
 - overviews now supported for reading.

HFA (Imagine) Driver:
 - Supports creating internal overviews in very large files. 
 - Support reading class names. 
 - Support creating compressed files. 

GeoTIFF Driver:
 - Support reading files with odd bit depths (ie. 3, 12, etc). 
 - Support 16/24bit floating point TIFFs (per Technote 3) (Andrey).
 - Support 12bit jpeg compressed imagery using libjpeg "MK1" library.

HDF4 Driver:
 - Added support for ASTER Level 1A, 1B and 2 products (Andrey). 


OGR 1.3.0 - Overview of Changes
-------------------------------

OGRGeometry:
 - WKT (and GML) encoding now attempts to preserve pretty much full double
   precision. 
 - geometries are now "coordinate dimension preserving" rather than dynamically
   figuring out dimension depending on whether Z is set.  So a geometry can
   now be 3D even if all z values are zero.  
 - Fixed up proper EMPTY geometry support per standard.

GRASS Driver:  
 - New driver for GRASS 6 vector data written by Radim Blazek. 

Interlis Driver: 
 - New driver for Swiss Interlis format from Permin Kalberer (SourcePole).

Shape Driver:
 - Fixed logic for degenerate polygons (Baumann Konstantin).
 
PostgreSQL/PostGIS Driver:
 - Implemented fast GetExtent() method (Oleg Semykin).
 - Implemented layer type from geometry_columns (Oleg Semykin).
 - Handle PostGIS 1.0 requirements for coordinate dimemsion exactness.
 - Handle EWKT type in PostGIS 1.0.
 - Generally PostGIS 0.x and 1.0 should now be supported fairly gracefully.
 - Added PostGIS "binary cursor" mode for faster geometry access.

VRT Driver:
 - Pass through attribute queries to underlying driver. 
 - Pass through spatial queries as attribute filters on the underlying layer.

S57 Driver:
 - Added concept of supporting different profiles. 
 - Added prototype AML profile support. 

MySQL Driver:
 - Fixed for FID recognition (eg. mediumint). 

GML Driver: 
 - Various fixes for generated GML correctness (Tom Kralidis).

TIGER/Line Driver:
 - Added Tiger 2004 support.

Oracle Driver:
 - Use VARCHAR2 for fixed size string fields. 
 - Use OCI_FID config variable when creating layers, and reading select results

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, [email protected]
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent