[Proj] best projection for europe

[Norman Vine]

Markus Schaber writes:
> Hello,
>
> I'm in the need for a good projection for displaying maps of (parts of)
> europe. We currently have all our data in WGS84 long/lat format in our
> PostGIS database. Is there any projection that you can advise from your
> experience to use for the whole europe?
>
> Currently, we simply use long/lat as karthesian coordinates with some
> shortening on the y axis, which is acceptable for southern and middle
> europe, but gets weird in northern europe.
>
> Usually, one would use the well known UTM or Gauss-Krüger projections
> from the EPSG database for europe, but both divide the data into zones.
> This has two drawbacks. First, handling zones adds complexity to the
> code that I would prefer to avoid in the first releases. Second, when we
> "zoom out" to display the whole europe (from spain to slovakia, from
> italy to scandinavia), it is difficult to "glue" the zones together.
>
> If anyone has made some good experiences with a specific projection, I'd
> be happy to hear about it.

There is no 'best' projection but if this is only for computer display
and never for areas larger then say a quarter of a hemisphere you
coukl try a local sterographic with the tangency point always at the
center of the map.

HTH

Norman