Good news for QGIS MapInfo users

So some good news for QGIS users who also need/want to use MapInfo.  QGIS via GDAL 2.0 can support MapInfo TAB file editing. In all older versions of GDAL there was only support for read and/or write but not both.

MapInfo TAB editing has been supported in GDAL 2 but up until this point QGIS has only be built against GDAL 1.xx.  GDAL 2.x is now the default GDAL release in OSGeo4w.

From Jurgen:

2.0.2 is now the default GDAL in OSGeo4W and the nightlies (qgis-ltr-dev,
qgis-rel-dev and qgis-dev) already picked it up.

With the next release the regular packages (2.14 and 2.8) will also be updated
to use it

Even if you don’t want to make the switch to full QGIS you can now use both bits of software and edit in both.

QGIS will still only support a single geometry type per layer so if you open a mixed tab file you will get the geometry type selector.  You can load the layer 3 times if you need the 3 different geometry types.