[PROJ] PROJ 9.8.0RC1

[Kristian Evers]

All,

In preparation for a new PROJ release I have uploaded release candidate for the packages.
We haven’t had any new grids submitted to PROJ-data since the last release of PROJ, so for
the first time in a long time the PROJ release will stand on its own.

Download the archives here: 

https://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-9.8.0RC1.tar.gz
https://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-9.8.0RC1.zip

The release candidate includes both updates and bug fixes. Release notes below.

Please test the release candidates and report any issues you may find with them.
Either here on the mailing list or on GitHub.

/Kristian

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# PROJ Release Notes

## 9.8.0

### Updates

* Database: update to EPSG v12.049 (#4671)

* Database: update ESRI records to ArcGIS Pro 3.6 (#4622)

* Support for Canadian vertical references MTM CGVD2013 epoch 1997, 2002, 2010 and
UTM CGVD28 epoch 1997, 2002, 2010 (#4623)

* `createOperationsCompoundToGeog()`: improvement to make "PNG94 / PNGMG94 zone 54 + Kumul
34 height" to "WGS 84 (G2139)" perform vertical transformation (#4624)

* Remove hardcoding of 'ETRS89-NOR [EUREF89]' cases and generalize it to other ETRS89-XXX
cases (#4625)

* Database: create ESRI aliases for geodetic_datum and geodetic_crs even if they are the
same as EPSG ones (#4626)

* Use Emscripten fetch in networkfilemanager (#4627)

* `ProjectedCRS::identify()`: do not return CRS whose ellipsoid is totally different from the input one (#4635)

* respect `CRS_EXTENT_USE=NONE` for ConcatenatedOperations (#4652)

* Add support for Equidistant Cylindrical ellipsoidal method (EPSG:1028) (#4656)

* Update `proj_symbol_rename.h` (#4657)

* WKT1 importer: deal with 'VERT_CS["Geoid 2012A",' (#4659)

* Generate correct library name in `proj.pc` (#4660)

* Derived projected CRS related improvements (#4667)

* ETRS89-xxx to ETRS89-yyy related improvements (#4668)

* `createCoordinateOperation()`: tune computed accuracy of a concatenated op within ETRS89 (#4670)

* `createOperationsCompoundToGeog()`: discard 2D-only transformations from interpolation
3D CRS to target 3D CRS (#4677)


### Bug Fixes

* CRS identification: fix issue when identifying WKT from older EPSG releases with newer
ones where the ETRS89-XXX national datums have been added (#4600)

* fix `normalizeForVisualization` to skip extent checks for axis-swap operations (#4632)

* Improvements to TRACE_FETCH debug messages (#4645)

* tmerc spherical: fix numeric instability at lat=lat_0 (#4674)