Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 5

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There is currently a debate at Categories for deletion#category:Articles with OSGB36 coordinates. -- User:Docu

Spacing after primes

The current form, "11° 22′ 33″ N" looks just awful, with those biiig spaces after the primes. How about using plain old apostrophes and double-quotes, "11° 22' 33" N", or doing it math-style, "$11^{\circ }\,22'\,33''$ N"? —wwoods 08:47, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It looks fine on my Mac. Please don't change the correct characters to typewriter quotation marks because of the poor quality of font display on a particular system. And for goodness' sake don't change text to an image file! —Michael Z. 2005-04-16 16:51 Z

"$11^{\circ }22'33''N$" looks kind of funky. And the PNG image I get is 522 bytes and will be cached by the server. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:03, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Help needed to find latitude/longitude of some UK towns

Hi, I am in the process of adding a map showing the location of every town in a subcategory of Category:Towns_in_England (and intend to then move on to Scottish/Welsh towns). I've had trouble finding the coordinates of some towns. Please could you take a look at User:Lupin/coords and help me to fill in the blanks? Many thanks. Lupin 14:48, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OSGB bug

File:OS grid key Britain.gif

This picture may help in fixing the {osgb36ref} bug. On the project page you invite us to help. This looks like a bug that I might be able to fix without detailed knowledge of php script. But where is the source code? -- RHaworth 00:46, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

It's at [1]. Probably in the transversemercator.php file. Egil would know where exactly. -- User:Docu

I reckon that in transversemercator.php, function LatLon2OSGB36() if you replace two occurrences of round with floor, you will fix this bug. -- RHaworth 08:21, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

Implemented. Thanks. -- Egil 05:14, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is I who am thanking you. -- RHaworth 08:36, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

OSGB36 as input

Whilst people navigating the coast of Great Britain may use latitude and longitude, inland these co-ordinates are almost never used because we have the excellent British national grid reference system. index.php should be amended to accept grid references as an alternative input parameter. Or a separate php should be written. It needs to accept both the all-numeric and the 'two letters plus even number of digits' formats.

If this was done, the following articles and hundreds more could use the php instantly. special:whatlinkshere/Template:Gbmapping, special:whatlinkshere/Template:Gbmappingsmall, special:whatlinkshere/Template:Gbmaprim.

And so they don't feel left out, you would also need to accept Irish grid refs.

-- RHaworth 01:20, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

Input in UTM was implemented once, but I later sort of decided against it because it made parsing of Wikitext to extract coordinates more complex and ugly since every parser would have to include routines for detecting and converting transverse mercator. So I removed and, and for the existing cases were UTM was used, I converted to lat/lon.

OSGB36 adds the extra subtility that it is not referrenced to WGS84, which makes yet another exception. So my thought was that it was much cleaner to have input as pure WGS84 lat/lon, and convert to other systems as required for the various map sources. One other thing: wouldn't you need to convert to degrees WGS84 for use with a GPS navigator, anyway? -- Egil 05:38, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that parsing the input parameters of index.php is complicated enough as it is. My idea was to create a separate php which would only accept OSGB and OSNI co-ordinates. It would convert them to lat/lon and call index.php.

I had the use of GPS for a few months then I had to give it back. In the two years since I have not felt the lack of GPS at all. But others like it, that is why we need the separate php.

I don't know whether you have noticed another horrible potential complexity - look at:

They contain 2000 map links using postcodes! I think all the GB mapping services accept post codes but I consider it a perversion. The postcode to co-ordinates database is licenced from Royal Mail but I do not think Wikipedia needs to bother about it. My solution here would be to add just one extra input option to index.php - a pass-through facility. The postcode would be made available, unchanged for use in any link that is capable of using it. This would achieve the object of giving the Wiki user a choice of map / aerial photo sources.

-- RHaworth 09:24, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

OSGB36 now available

Template:oscoor is now up and working for GB at least. (I hope to add Ireland shortly.)

I apologise for writing it in Javascript, but:

• I can manage Javascript with only a few references to the manual. Doing it in php would involve a steep learning curve for me.
• It would relieve the always hard pressed Wiki servers from doing lots of maths.
• There is the disadvantage that it breaks the browser back button - but so do some of the map sources we link to.

At the bottom of Map sources/GB is a circular link to help test the arithmetic - this example is about the worst that it gets - over most of the country it is acurate to a metre. To examine the code, just call it with invalid coordinates. -- RHaworth 06:22, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

I have some php code I developed on my web site at http://www.strollingguides.co.uk/os/osconv.php which handles both OSGB and OSI conversions consistantly. Consistantly wrong, quite possibly, as unfortunaltely I don't know enough about the subject. It makes my head hurt after a while!.

If anyone wants to take this forward the source code is at http://www.strollingguides.co.uk/os/osconv.txt --- Anthony Houghton 14:22, 2007 Jan 19 (UTC)

Worldwind alt, dir, tilt parameters +++

I can see this map location is evolving, and has to deal with interfacing with many different kinds of geo-databases.

I added the following to the kiwi page kakahi.

• Kakahi Location on a map: 38.93647°S 175.38455°E / -38.93647; 175.38455

The worldwind URL on this page is not supported... eg Composite Satellite/Radar Image of Kakahi with Mountains: Ruahehu, Tongarero and Ngarahoe in background Hence I will have no reason or temptation to upload the (derived) equvalent WorldWind screen shot.

OK... it would be "nice to have" the information for alt, dir and tilt in wiki. As a "coor" it would be available to other applications also, rather then just worldwind.

Also the current "coor" stub {{coor d|38.93647|S|175.38455|E|region:nz_type:city}} allows a contributor to add the country and administrative unit, but the TownName/Topic name is missing. Hence the name of the "coor" will be derived from the page name. Hence only one coor per page is useful.

And if I was to get really excited, then maybe it would be useful to add Date/time so information about photos can be tagged with location and time photo was taken. This would be useful for automatic generation of timelines for a location or country.

NevilleDNZ 08:14, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

FYI: DNS/bind also stores Lat/Long location information, DNS#Types_of_DNS_records

Here is a query example using the linux dig command:

$ dig 3ttechnology.com LOC
Returns:
3ttechnology.com.       600     IN      LOC     2 10 0.000 S 104 30 0.000 E 10.00m 1000m 10m 10m
This includes altitude, and an estimate of the size/precision of the location that is refered to.

Details: from RFC 1035

3 Master File Format

The LOC record is expressed in a master file in the following format: 
   <owner> <TTL> <class> LOC ( d1 [m1 [s1]] {"N"|"S"} d2 [m2 [s2]]
                               {"E"|"W"} alt["m"] [siz["m"] [hp["m"]
                               [vp["m"]]]] )
 (The parentheses are used for multi-line data as specified in [RFC 1035] section 5.1.) 
where: d1:     [0 .. 90]            (degrees latitude)
       d2:     [0 .. 180]           (degrees longitude)
       m1, m2: [0 .. 59]            (minutes latitude/longitude)
       s1, s2: [0 .. 59.999]        (seconds latitude/longitude)
       alt:    [-100000.00 .. 42849672.95] BY .01 (altitude in meters)
       siz, hp, vp: [0 .. 90000000.00] (size/precision in meters)

• Sites supporting DNS LOC

I mention this in the hope it might be useful. (I am feeling guilty at being a spectator AND with the knowledge that the best solution is sometimes not so easy to conclude on.)

NevilleDNZ 08:53, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates/Templates_used

The lists how many times different templates use Coor templates (on May 16). -- User:Docu

Google maps

I think we should remove Google maps from the Global section of kvaleberg.com Map Sources. In truth, Google does North America well (actually superbly) in both satellite images and line art maps, it also has the UK at barely passable level. The rest of the world barely exist except in very low resolution satellite maps at a scale which shouldnt't really qualify for anything useful. Until it is expanded well beyond beta, Google maps should be treated as US only. -- Solipsist 20:17, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Done. I've also tried to clean up Great Britain. The concept is that the default map scale should be specified in the Wikipedia map reference, not that the user should worry about it when selecting a map from the list. Scaling up and down should best be done at the original map service. -- Egil 03:30, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Meanwhile I do not know any place on earth that is not offered in an acceptabe resolution by Google Earth.

The national pages on Kvaleberg should be run with an interface to Google Earth generally. -- Simplicius 11:13, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Google Earth with 2600 coordinates from german Wikipedia

Hi, I transfer 2600 coordinates from the german Wikipedia in a XML-file for the software Google Earth [2]. At this website you can see the results and download the pointdata. I test also NASA World Wind, but this software can handle max. 200 points. With more points it stop the work. I hope with my work we can better handle the coordinates in the german Wikipedia. The user can see how bad or good the point is. I use the types to groupe the points. It was usefull to create a new type:waterbodies for lakes, channels and waterfalls. -- Stefan Kühn 2 July 2005 00:14 (UTC)

Now I have complete the dataset with 5300 Points from the englisch Wikipedia. Download. In Google Earth load this klm-file with Menu File/Open. -- Stefan Kühn 16:59, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Will it be possible, eventually, to create co-ordinate entries in wiki articles (using something like the coor template) that generate a link to Google Earth? For those users with Google Earth installed, it would be mighty nice to have a button in the wiki article that "takes you there". Technically, this seems to imply creating a kmz file on the fly, but I may be wrong... Urhixidur 16:15, 2005 August 11 (UTC)