[GRASSLIST:1239] Re: possible bug?

[Glynn Clements]

Paul Kelly wrote:

> > When
> > using a projected location everything works fine (tested with merc), the
> > PROJ_INFO file also contains the radius in this case.
> 
> Yes the sphere case seems to be handled separately in the g.setproj code,
> can't see why it should be like that but I'm sure there is a reason....

Support for a spherical earth was only enabled in Oct 2002 (for CVS;
it wasn't in 5.0.1, but was in 5.0.2). This was discussed around that
time in the thread entitled "GRASS and lat/long with sphere" on the
developers' list.

At the time, my guess was that something might have been dividing by
f, e or e^2, which would cause problems for a spherical earth, so it
had been disabled (there was a disabled entry for sphere in
ellipse.table as far back as 4.3). However, I've yet to hear of any
actual problems since it has been enabled.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>