[Proj] datum matters

[strebe]

On Mar 29, 2009, at 1:45:42 PM, "Noel Zinn" <ndzinn at comcast.net> wrote:
Fictitious datum?  That’s offensive, daan.  When the datum is ignored, cartography is an entertainment merely purporting to represent the real world.  That’s fine, but (the) datum is hardly fictitious.  -Noel 


Noel: I did not call the datum fictitious in general. Please read more carefully so that people do not get attributed with and then taken to task for words and ideas they do not espouse.

If no datum is attached to the coordinates, and if the projection/coordinate conversion software requires a datum because it has conflated projection and coordinate transformation, then the user would be forced to declare some fictitious datum in order to satisfy the ideological requirements of the software. That is what I referred to as a "fictitious datum".. If that is "offensive", then feel free to elaborate, though I am very much at the point of bowing out of the conversation. (I will not, however, take my marbles and go home.)

Regards,
— daan Strebe
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