[OSGeo-Discuss] Munich Orientation Convention, Mapcodes, and All the Rest

[Steve Swazee]

Ian,

Hardly confused.  Two of three principal originators of GeoMOOSE are on staff.  Served as the fiscal agent for FOSS4G NA 2013.  Former member of the GITA board of directors.

 

It matters what you program.  If you want your software to have utility and gain acceptance, I am suggesting incorporation of USNG/MGRS as a feature would have value.  Likewise, it would be providing a service.

 

Per the bombing story attributed to a confusion of mapping standards – concrete example would be beneficial.  I used to teach Close Air Support in the USMC and to be certain mistakes happen.  It is doubtfully, however, that it was due to none standard cartography among NATO troops, and far more likely due to another issue.

 

Steve

 

From: Ian Turton [mailto:ijturton at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2015 10:40 AM
To: Swazee, Steve <sdswazee at sharedgeo.org>
Cc: OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Munich Orientation Convention, Mapcodes, and All the Rest

 


Now that I have your attention, I believe you and the rest of the OSGeo community would be well served by spending some time truly learning about this issue.  In so doing, I’m sure the open minds among you will come to the conclusion that USNG/MGRS is the answer to the issue I am addressing.  OSGeo could do the world a heap of good in doing so.

 

Fascinating as this discussion is  I can't help wondering if you (as a group) are confused as to what OSGeo does? - we write software and if you publish a standard there is a fair chance we will write some code to integrate that code into our software, especially if there is user demand. 

 

So I expect you are preaching to the wrong people - either we care or we don't but most of us have no power to change the world.

 

At the risk of prolonging this discussion I'll add the following. 

Currently I'm not seeing any demand for this from users - I hear a lot of talk about military and 1st responders but the last time I talked to a military guy he was telling hair raising stories of US Army planes bombing UK troops because they both use a grid system but the the US has letters up the side of the map and the UK has letters across the bottom (it was slightly more complex than that but basically that was the problem), so their requirement was for WGS84 coordinates to match their GPS. 

 

Ian

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