- Thu 30 June 2022
- Cartographica
- Gaige B. Paulsen
- #release, #tools
As many of you may be aware, we have used GDAL and PROJ for many years to handle file import and export as well as coordinate reference system management in Cartographica. As such, we include a private copy of those libraries in Cartographica. Internally, I've made use of the command line tools for a number of years when necessary, but they've never been a part of what we have made available as part of Cartographica.
Starting with 1.6, we are going to make those available to users with a valid Cartographica license.
As with all command-line tools, there's quite a bit of complexity to using them, and as such, we really cannot support the tools directly (except for bugs in the ability to execute them). Documentation for the tools are available at the links above and include good examples.
For PROJ, all CRS support data is embedded in Cartographica and should be used automatically. For GDAL, the supported raster and vector drivers are those that are available in Cartographica as well as many of the in-build network drivers.
How to use the command-line tools
The following assumes that you've installed Cartographica in the Applications folder
and left it named Cartographica.app. The tools themselves are located in the MacOS folder
inside of the Contents folder of the Cartographica.app bundle.
To execute a command line tool, you can use the full path of the tool in Cartographica,
for example, here's running proj:
/Applications/Cartographica.app/Contents/MacOS/proj
If you expect to use these tools frequently, then you may want to modify your path temporarily by appending that directory to your path, for example:
export PATH=${PATH}:/Applications/Cartographica.app/Contents/MacOS/
Included tools
Here is the list of currently-included tools, with links to their online Documentation from the original sources.
Please note that the linked documentation may not exactly match what is included with the version of Cartographica that you are running. Please check the versions of GDAL or PROJ against those in Cartographica for specific information.
PROJ
| Command | Summary |
|---|---|
| cct | Coordinate Conversion and Transformation |
| cs2cs | Filter for transformations between two coordinate reference systems |
| geod | perform geodesic (Great Circle) computations |
| gie | The Geospatial Integrity Investigation Environment |
| proj | Cartographic projection filter |
| projinfo | Geodetic object and coordinate operation queries |
| projsync | Tool for synchronizing PROJ datum and transformation support data |
GDAL
| Command | Summary |
|---|---|
| gdal_contour | Builds vector contour lines from a raster elevation model |
| gdal_create | Create a raster file (without source dataset) |
| gdal_grid | Creates regular grid from the scattered data |
| gdal_rasterize | Burns vector geometries into a raster |
| gdal_translate | Converts raster data between different formats |
| gdal_viewshed | Compute a visibility mask for a raster |
| gdaladdo | Builds or rebuilds overview images |
| gdalbuildvrt | Builds a VRT from a list of datasets |
| gdaldem | Tools to analyze and visualize DEMs |
| gdalinfo | Lists information about a raster dataset |
| gdallocationinfo | Raster query tool |
| gdalmanage | Identify, delete, rename and copy raster data files |
| gdalsrsinfo | Lists info about a given SRS in number of formats (WKT, PROJ.4, etc.) |
| gdaltindex | Builds an OGR-supported dataset as a raster tileindex |
| gdaltransform | Transforms coordinates |
| gdalwarp | Image reprojection and warping utility |
| ogr2ogr | Converts simple features data between file formats |
| ogrinfo | Lists information about an OGR-supported data source |
| ogrlineref | Create linear reference and provide some calculations using it |
| ogrtindex | Creates a tileindex |