Would be great to rely on nio package

[avianey]

To avoid loading the whole file into memory as a byte buffer, it could be great to move to the java nio package, using FileChannel. Some of the advantages would be :

• speed improvement (no need to load everything into memory)
• less risk of OOME (specially on the Android side)
• some operation don't need to read the whole file/raster and only requires a direct / single pixel access such as reading an elevation value from a GeoTIFF DEM model

on the other hand, it could be great to keep current implementation for use case that requires :

• reading a tiff from something else than a file
• access multiple time a same information (multiple read of the same pixel of the same tiff)

What do you think ?

[bosborn]

I am not opposed if the current functionality is preserved.
No current plans, but open to pull requests.