[postgis-users] PostGIS 2.0 Wishlist

[Frank Warmerdam]

Nicolas Ribot wrote:
>> Likewise here -- we have some work-arounds, but that's exactly what they
>> are. Dateline issues mainly -- but I know I've seen issues with polar
>> regions as well. OTH our engineers haven't conjured up suggestions for
>> functions that haven't already been made, and none of those seem to be a
>> high priority. (Is there geld for this work is another question ... our
>> new corporate owners have more need for dateline / polar areas than did
>> our core business at GlobeXplorer, which was more US/Euro-centric (but
>> there are US possessions and parts of Alaska that do cross the dateline)
>> but I also have no idea if they are open to funding OS. I can always ask
>> I guess, if there's enough other interest.
>>
> 
> French Space Agency (CNES) is also very interested by adding
> geocentric support into PostGIS.
> We (camptocamp) are in touch with them to fund a survey to estimate
> the amount of work needed to do so.
> 
> We will keep the list posted about this project.
> 
> Nicolas Ribot - CampToCamp.

Nicolas,

I believe PROJ.4 already supports geocentric coordinate systems, so in
theory it should be as simple as adding a new entry in the spatial_ref_sys
table associating an SRS ID with the PROJ.4 definition.

eg (at proj.4 commandline):

cs2cs +proj=latlong +datum=WGS84 +to +proj=geocent
-117 33
-2430880.68     -4770871.97 3453958.64

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org