[MetaCRS] Possible inclusion of GeographicLib in MetaCRS

Mon May 9 14:12:26 EDT 2011

Hello All . . .

This looks like a serious package by a serious individual.  It appears to me that the individual is a serious geodesist and the library a serious mathematical work.  This is a bit of a departure from what most of us are: primarily end user application developers who need to incorporate coordinate conversion capabilities into an end user GIS type product.

The library includes the very interesting implementation of the Transverse Mercator in an exact form which I find very interesting.

I vote in favor of adding this library to our project.  I think it is an excellent example of the reason why "MetaCrs" is what is: "a collection of coordinate system libraries".

Norm

-----Original Message-----
From: metacrs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:metacrs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Charles Karney
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2011 2:27 PM
To: metacrs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [MetaCRS] Possible inclusion of GeographicLib in MetaCRS

Frank suggested that I redirect this request to the MetaCRS mailing
list...
   --Charles

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Possible inclusion of GeographicLib in OSGeo
Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 10:27:43 -0400
From: Charles Karney <charles.karney at sri.com>
To: info at osgeo.org <info at osgeo.org>
CC: Francesco Lovergine <frankie at debian.org>

I would like to explore making GeographicLib an OSGeo project.  Here are
the answers to the questionnaire at

      http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/application.html

   1. Please provide the name and email address of the principal Project
      Owner.

      Charles Karney <charles at karney.com>

   2. Please provide the names and emails of co-project owners (if any).

      Francesco Lovergine <frankie at debian.org> (Debian integration)

   3. Please provide the names, emails and entity affiliation of all
      official committers.

      Charles Karney <charles at karney.com>, SRI International
      Francesco Lovergine <frankie at debian.org>, Debian

   4. Please describe your Project.

      C++ library for basic projections, geodesic calculations, geoid
      evaluations.  Emphasis is on high accuracy with documented bounds on
      the errors.  Part of the attraction of GeographicLib is its lack of
      dependence on other libraries.  If *all* your code needs to do is
      transform between geographic coordinates and UTM (for example),
      GeographicLib may be the simplest solution.

   5. Why is hosting at OSGeo good for your project?

      Exposure to more end users.  Ease use of GeographicLib by other
      OSGeo projects.

   6. Type of application does this project represents (client, server,
      standalone, library, etc.):

      library

   7. Please describe any relationships to other open source projects.

      none (depends only on standard C++ library)

   8. Please describe any relationships with commercial companies or
      products.

      none

   9. Which open source license(s) will the source code be released under?

      LGPL

10. Is there already a beta or official release?

      Yes, see http://geographiclib.sourceforge.net.  GeographicLib is
      also a Debian package.

11. What is the origin of your project (commercial, experimental, thesis
      or other higher education, government, or some other source)?

      personal hobby

12. Does the project support open standards? Which ones and to what
      extent? (OGC, w3c, ect.) Has the software been certified to any
      standard (CITE for example)? If not, is it the intention of the
      project owners to seek certification at some point?

      not applicable

13. Is the code free of patents, trademarks, and do you control the
      copyright?

      yes x 3

14. How many people actively contribute (code, documentation, other?) to
      the project at this time?

      1

15. How many people have commit access to the source code repository?

      2

16. Approximately how many users are currently using this project?

      SourceForge downloads average 500/month.  Estimate several hundred
      active users.

17. What type of users does your project attract (government,
      commercial, hobby, academic research, etc. )?

      I've fielded questions about GeographicLib from a wide range of
      users (US Census Bureau, oil industry, aerospace industry,
      academics, etc.)

18. If you do not intend to host any portion of this project using the
      OSGeo infrastructure, why should you be considered a member project
      of the OSGeo Foundation?

      Assuming GeographicLib remains hosted on SourceForge, OSGeo
      membership would permit its inclusion in OSGeo4W and possibly
      simplify its use by other OSGeo projects.

19. Does the project include an automated build and test?

      cmake support will be added on the next release (probably within a
      month).  This includes source packaging, binary installer for
      Windows, regression tests.  In addition, as a Debian project, it
      undergoes an automated build.

20. What language(s) are used in this project? (C/Java/perl/etc)

      Code is C++.  Documentation is via doxygen.  Man pages are via
      pod2man and pod2html.

21. What is the dominant written language (i.e. English, French,
      Spanish, German, etc) of the core developers?

      English.

22. What is the (estimated) size of a full release of this project? How
      many users do you expect to download the project when it is
      released?

      Source tarball unpacks to 7.6MB, of which 5MB is documentation.

      Library size is 310kB.  Headers are 350kB.

      GeographicLib uses data files for geoid height calculations.  The
      largest of these is EGM2008 on a 1' grid; this is 470MB, installed,
      and 170MB, as a compressed tar file.  All the geoid grids are 560MB
      installed.

      See answer to question 16 for the number of users.

-- 
Charles Karney <charles.karney at sri.com>
SRI International, Princeton, NJ 08543-5300

Tel: +1 609 734 2312
Fax: +1 609 734 2662

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