[GRASS5] [bug #3530] (grass) distance calculation in s/v.surf.idw wrong in lat/lon projection

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this bug's URL: http://intevation.de/rt/webrt?serial_num=3530
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Subject: distance calculation in s/v.surf.idw wrong in lat/lon projection

Platform: GNU/Linux/i386
grass obtained from: Trento Italy site
grass binary for platform: Downloaded precompiled Binaries
GRASS Version: All

My name is Tye Parzybok (tyep at metstat.com) and I've been a happy, loyal GRASS software user for over 10 years.  I recently discovered that when using the old s.surf.idw (new v.surf.idw) function in a "geographic" projection (i.e. lat.lon) and with points in lat/lon, the distances computed DO NOT account for convergence of the meridians. What needs to be done, and I've done this with an old (4.2) version of GRASS, is the same logic used in r.surf.idw -- which computes distances from raster to raster along a geodesic -- needs to be added to the s/v.surf.idw function. Since the distance units aren't important to IDW, it doesn't matter what you use, but they need to represent a true distance (in say meters) instead of a straight line (Euclidean) decimal degree distance. 

Here is the distance calculation I used in my modified version of s.surf.idw. The distance units are in km and I assume the earth is a perfect sphere (using a better spherical representation would make this even better). This first part of this is to convert the degrees into radians.

First calculation of “dist”:
                northr = (north * 3.14159265) / 180.0;
                eastr = (east * 3.14159265) / 180.0;
                inorthr = (points[i].north * 3.14159265) / 180.0;
                ieastr = (points[i].east * 3.14159265) / 180.0;
                list[i].dist = 6378.7 * acos((sin(northr) * sin(inorthr)) + (cos(northr) * cos(inorthr) * cos(ieastr- eastr)));


Second calculation of “dist”:
                northr = (north * 3.14159265) / 180.0;
                eastr = (east * 3.14159265) / 180.0;
                inorthr = (points[i].north * 3.14159265) / 180.0;
                ieastr = (points[i].east * 3.14159265) / 180.0;
                dist = 6378.7 * acos((sin(northr) * sin(inorthr)) + (cos(northr) * cos(inorthr) * cos(ieastr- eastr)));


Here is a web link that pertains to this issue:
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/1992-February/000092.html

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