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+.. _rfc5:
+
+====================================================================
+PROJ RFC 5: Adopt GeoTIFF-based grids for grids delivered with PROJ
+====================================================================
+
+:Author: Even Rouault
+:Contact: even.rouault@spatialys.com
+:Status: Adopted
+:Implementation target: PROJ 7
+:Last Updated: 2020-01-28
+
+Motivation
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+This RFC is a continuation of :ref:`rfc4`. With RFC4, PROJ can, upon request
+of the user, download grids from a CDN in a progressive way. There is also API,
+such as :cpp:func:`proj_download_file` to be able to download a GeoTIFF grid in
+the user writable directory. The content of the CDN at https://cdn.proj.org
+is https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ-data , which has the same content
+as https://github.com/OSGeo/proj-datumgrid converted in GeoTIFF files. In the
+current state, we could have a somewhat inconsistency between users relying on
+the proj-datumgrid, proj-datumgrid-[world,northamerica,oceania,europe] packages
+of mostly NTv2 and GTX files, and what is shipped through the CDN. Maintaining
+two repositories is also a maintaince burden in the long term.
+
+It is thus desirable to have a single source of truth, and we propose it to be
+based on the GeoTIFF grids.
+
+Summary of work planned by this RFC and related decisions
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+- https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ-data/ will be used, starting with
+  PROJ 7.0, to create "static" grid packages.
+
+- For now, a single package of, mostly GeoTIFF grids (a few text files for
+  PROJ init style files, as well as a few edge cases for deformation models where
+  grids have not been converted), will be delivered.
+  Its size at the time of writing is 486 MB (compared to 1.5 GB of uncompressed
+  NTv2 + GTX content, compressed to ~ 700 MB currently)
+
+- The content of this archive will be flat, i.e. no subdirectories
+
+- Each file will be named according to the following pattern
+  ``${agency_name}_${filename}[.ext]``. For example fr_ign_ntf_r93.tif
+  This convention should allow packagers, if the need arise, to be able to
+  split the monolothic package in smaller ones, based on criterion related to
+  the country.
+
+  The agency name is the one you can see from the directory names at
+  https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ-data/.
+  ``${agency_name}`` itself is structure like ``${two_letter_country_code_of_agency_nationality}_${some_abbreviation}``
+  (with the exception of eur_nkg, for the Nordic Geodetic Commission which
+  isn't affiliated to a single country but to some european countries, and
+  follows the general scheme)
+
+- https://github.com/OSGeo/proj-datumgrid and related packages will only be
+  maintained during the remaining lifetime of PROJ 6.x. After that, the
+  repository will no longer receive any update and will be put in archiving
+  state (see https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/about-archiving-repositories)
+
+- PROJ database ``grid_alternatives`` table will be updated to point to the new
+  TIFF filenames. It will also maintain the old names as used by current
+  proj-datumgrid packages to be able to provide backward compatibility when
+  a PROJ string refers to a grid by its previous name.
+
+- Upon adoption of this RFC, new grids referenced by PROJ database will only
+  point to GeoTIFF grid names.
+
+- Related to the above point, if a PROJ string refers to a grid name, let's
+  say foo.gsb. This grid will first be looked for in all the relevant locations
+  under this name. If no match is found, then a lookup in the
+  ``grid_alternatives`` table will be done to retrieve the potential new name
+  (GeoTIFF file), and if there's such match, a new look-up in the file system
+  will be done with the name of this GeoTIFF file.
+
+- The ``package_name`` column of grid_alternatives will no longer be filled.
+  And ``url`` will be filled with the direct URL to the grid in the CDN, for
+  example: https://cdn.proj.org/fr_ign_ntf_r93.tif
+
+- The Python scripts to convert grids (NTv2, GTX) to GeoTIFF currently available at
+  https://github.com/rouault/sample_proj_gtiff_grids/ will be moved to a
+  grid_tools/ subdirectories of https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ-data/
+  Documentation for those utilities will be added to PROJ documentation.
+
+- Obviously, all the above assumes PROJ builds to have libtiff enabled.
+  Non-libtiff builds are not considered as nominal PROJ builds (if a PROJ master
+  build is attempted and libtiff is not detected, it fails. The user has to
+  explictly ask to disable TIFF support), and users deciding to go through that
+  route will have to deal with the consequences (that is that
+  grid-based transformations generated by PROJ will likely be non working)
+
+Backward compatibility
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+This change is considered to be *mostly* backward compatible. There might be
+impacts for software using :cpp:func:`proj_coordoperation_get_grid_used` and
+assuming that the url returned is one of the proj-datumgrid-xxx files at
+https://download.osgeo.org. As mentionned in
+https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/proj/2020-January/009274.html , this
+assumption was not completely bullet-proof either.
+There will be impacts on software checking the value of PROJ pipeline strings
+resulting :cpp:func:`proj_create_crs_to_crs`. The new grid names will now
+be returned (the most impacted software will likely be PROJ's own test suite)
+
+Although discouraged, people not using the new proj-datumgrid-geotiff-XXX.zip
+archives, should still be able to use the old archives made of NTv2/GTX files,
+at least as long as the PROJ database does not only point to a GeoTIFF grid.
+So this might be a short-term partly working solution, but at time goes, it
+will become increasingly non-working. The nominal combination will be
+PROJ 7.0 + proj-datumgrid-geotiff-1.0.zip
+
+Testing
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+PROJ test suite will have to be adapted for the new TIFF based filenames.
+
+Mechanism to auto-promote existing NTv2/GTX names to TIFF ones will be exercised.
+
+Proposed implementation
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/pull/1891 and https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ-data/pull/5
+
+Adoption status
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The RFC was adopted on 2020-01-28 with +1's from the following PSC members
+
+* Kristian Evers
+* Even Rouault
+* Thomas Knudsen
+* Howard Butler
+* Kurt Schwehr
+