[Proj] What proj library version is best?

[Craig Bruce]

Gerald Evenden <gerald.evenden at verizon.net> wrote:

> This discussion reminds me of the email interaction Frank Warmerdam
> and I had about what should be included in a projection library.
> My position was, and still is, that *only* the projection (conversion
> between geographic and cartesian space) is the domain of the library.
> All non-projection elements like datum shifts and x-y-z transformations
> are separate and unrelated problems and belong in their own library
> systems.

As an end-user of the system, what I want is a single interface that takes
care of everything to do with coordinate/datum transformations for me.
I don't really care about all of the sub-levels of stuff that needs to
be done.

However, there appears to be a significant practical issue here in that
Gerald continues to add new projections to his own 'pure' copy of the
PROJ library while Frank continues to develop the higher-level operations.
It looks like decoupling the efforts would be the best practical solution.
The "PROJ" library could remain 'pure' and Frank could reorganize his
work into a "COORDSYS" (or some similar name) library that is built on top
of PROJ and provides a complete interface for coorindate transformations
so that end users don't need to know that a 'pure' PROJ library is even
present.

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Dr. Craig S. Bruce        | Ph 819-771-8303 x205 |             CubeWerx Inc.
Senior Software Developer |   Fax 819-771-8388   |  Gatineau, Québec, Canada
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