[Qgis-user] degrees: is degr/min/sec still used? Or decimal preferable?

[Nicolas Cadieux]

Hi,

Other people have given you good mathematical /computational answers.  Between decimal degrees (dd) and d/m/s, i find that dd is easier to handle.  However the choice of using a degrees or a national CRS in meter or feet is not just limited to the x and y coordinate format. If you are positioning only 2D point data, I expect you can get away with it but if you have angles, distances, heights,  areas or volume to measure, then there are other parameters to take into account in the CRS.  X,y formats are then just one parameter in a much more complexe CRS picture (like the geiod).  The ultimate goal of all these CRS is to reduce distortion for a particular type of measurement over a particular part of the world.   Therefore, depending on the problem, a CRS in degrees is sometimes called for, and a sometimes not.

Nicolas

> Le 10 avr. 2017 à 02:39, Richard Duivenvoorde [via OSGeo.org] <ml-node+s1560n5316567h38 at n6.nabble.com> a écrit :
> 
> Hi List, 
> 
> Had a discussion here with some people about the use of showing the 
> latlon degrees in degrees/minute/seconds tuple instead of the decimal 
> notation: 
> "4.40069397,51.71060887" 
> vs 
> "4°24′02.49807059″E,51°42′38.19184916″N" (or variations on that) 
> 
> Is there some general preference in this? To me the first one is just 
> easier to handle, but I'm not sure what the general preference is in the 
> GIS world. 
> 
> Any comments? 
> 
> Or is everybody using the national crs's anyway :-) 
> 
> Regards, 
> 
> Richard Duivenvoorde 
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