Orientation system

[Hal Mueller]

7?Dec?1995?19?35?46?GMT?@bnr.ca>
organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
reply-to: grassu-list at max.cecer.army.mil
newsgroups: info.grass.user
originator: daemon at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu


I'm not so sure it's clockwise.  If I have perfectly horizontal text,
it seems counterintuitive that "increase the angle by 30 degrees"
should make the text run downhill.  If your users have a significant
math background, they might expect you to follow _that_ convention
(ccw=positive).

Much depends on your actual application--scripting language?  GUI to a
cartographic tool?  Are the users map readers who don't remember
algebra, or mathematicians who don't know how to shoot a bearing?

I think a better solution might be to get away from the terms
plus/minus, and use east/west instead.

-- 
Hal Mueller                             ManTech Environmental 
EPA, NHEERL-Western Ecology Division    (541) 754-4490    Fax 754-4818
200 SW 35th Street                      halm at mail.cor.epa.gov
Corvallis, Oregon 97333-4901  USA       http://www.zilker.net/~hal/