[udig-devel] uDIG, GeoTools and MapInfo Tab

[Balint Persics <persicsb@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I am working on a GIS software based on uDIG 1.2  and I have several questions.

I need to implement a MapInfo TAB reader since we have a lot of files
in that format.
I set up the following plan:
0. Use GDAL/OGR Java bindings to read the data.
1. Implement the TAB reader as a GeoTools Data plugin (implementing
org.geotools.data.FeatureReader etc.) Maybe I will port the
unsupported module from GT 2.4 or implement it form scratch, it is not
decided yet.
2. Create a uDIG  plugin, implementing a catalog service.

The following questions arose:
1. I want to try out the new optimized renderer in GT 2.7-SNAPSHOT (I
have files with several hundred megabytes and maybe hundreds of
thousands of features). How to integrate GT 2.7-SNAPSHOT into uDIG
1.2? Simply replace the jars in net.refractions.udig.libs?
2. How do I add GDAL Java bindings as a dependency to my GeoTools
module? Can I use GDAL 1.6 binaries downloaded from
http://vbkto.dyndns.org/sdk? I noticed that GDAL Java bindings are a
great PITA since the API is not backwards compatible between versions
(eg. ogr.Open(String) vs. ogr.Open(String,int). Is there any API docs
for correctly using GDAL Java bindings?

Thanks for your help,
Balint PERSICS

-- 
Persics Balint