[OSRS-PROJ] commercial apps

[Clifford J Mugnier]

What is GeoTrans?  The only one I know about is the "Geographic Translator"
that is part of the Department of Defense Joint Mapping Tool Kit (JMTK).
That is "For Official Use Only,"  and certainly is NOT available for
commercial development outside of DoD channels.  Is there another package
around that is using that acronym ?

In regard to ALL the commercial applications as well as the "Public Domain"
applications, only the POSC "EPSG" system/documentation comes close to what
is truly useful in foreign countries outside of Canada/USA/Mexico stuff.
Everything else is for thematic/small-scale stuff.  Large-scale stuff used
for 1:50,000, 1:25,000 and larger (1:1,000) is generally too exacting for
the Public Domain concoctions.  The EPSG is intended to be accurate to
better than a meter, if memory serves me correctly.  Good enough for
looking for oil, but NOT good enough to locate property corners in an urban
environment.

If you're doing thematic/regional stuff, the Public Domain software as well
as the commercial "canned" software is adequate.  If you're locating
telephone/power poles, fire hydrants, water valves, etc. the commercial
stuff is useless outside of the U.S.  If you are doing property corners,
cadastral applications, land titlization work; the canned stuff is a
guaranteed disaster because there is no acknowledgement for specific
projection formulae variations for each different country.  The errors in
coordinate transformations for those applications can be maddening if you
don't know what you're doing ...

Which is good for what depends on your intended application.

One size does NOT fit all.  For geodetic applications, it's like dancing in
a snakepit.

Clifford J. Mugnier (cjmce at LSU.edu)
Chief of Geodesy
CENTER FOR GEOINFORMATICS
Department of Civil Engineering
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY
Baton Rouge, LA  70803
Voice and Facsimile:  (225) 578-8536

http://www.ASPRS.org/resources.html

-------------------------------------

Hello Frank,
Can you or anyone give us more comparison between GeoTrans and Proj4?

I alsofound GeoTrans easier, but with no support like for Proj4, I decided
on Proj4.

Best regards,
Paul.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Warmerdam" <warmerdam at pobox.com>
To: <osrs-proj at remotesensing.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 9:54 AM
Subject: Re: [OSRS-PROJ] commercial apps


> Marc Pelletier wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Can anyone tell me about commercial apps using Proj4 for their
> > projection engine? I'm trying to make a case against roll-our-own for
my
> > boss.
> >
>
> Marc,
>
> Well, whether it makes sense to roll your own or not depends on alot of
> factors.  However, I would stress that few geospatial software companies
> roll their complete own projections library.  If you want to support a
variety
> of projections it can be difficult to do well.
>
> I don't know about complete sorries about these companies, but I do know
that
> Global Geomatics, Avenza, Softmap, and Cubewerx all use portions of
PROJ.4
> in their software.  I also know that some of the "mainline" GIS and
> Geospatial software companies used adapted forms of other public
libraries,
> such as GCTP at PCI.  A number of vendors also use commercial projections
> libraries from Blue Marble and Mentor Software.
>
> If you are looking for commercial support, you can talk to Mentor or Blue
> Marble.  If you want customized support for PROJ.4 you could talk to me.
> If you want a really clean code base you can munge as desired, you might
> want to look at the geotrans code adapted in OSSIM or GeoTrans on it's
> own (it's a little easier to understand than PROJ.4).
>
> I would also like to stress that one way or the other, the world doesn't
> need another way of describing projections.  If you do roll your own, at
> least consider tieing into something like OpenGIS Well Known Text format
> for describing your coordinate systems.
>
> Best regards,
> --
>
---------------------------------------+----------------------------------
----
> I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
> light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
> and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent
>

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