- From: Erik Wilde <dret@berkeley.edu>
- Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:31:19 -0800
- To: Andrei Popescu <andreip@google.com>
- CC: public-geolocation <public-geolocation@w3.org>
hello andrei. >>> http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/Overview.html >> the current title is "Geolocation API Specification" and it might be more >> accurate to have it reflect the scope of the API, i.e. lat/long information; >> this might make it easier for people to understand the scope of the API. > Actually, if the scope is not clear, we should clarify the wording in > the Scope section. Could you please suggest some improvements to it? > Besides, we do plan to add address information in v2 (as you have seen > on the other thread) so this API won't be just for lat/long. this is the current wording of the scope section: ---------------------------------- "This specification is limited to providing a scripting APIs for retrieving location information associated with a hosting device. The location information is provided in terms of coordinates that apply to a geographic coordinate system. The scope of this specification does not include providing a markup language of any kind. The scope of this specification does not include defining new URI schemes for building URIs that identify geographic locations." ---------------------------------- a more explicit version could be something like this: ---------------------------------- "This specification is limited to providing an API for retrieving geoposition information associated with a hosting device. The geoposition information is provided in terms of coordinates of the WGS84 coordinate system, and optionally an altitude. The scope of this specification does not include providing a markup language of any kind. The scope of this specification does not include defining new URI schemes for identifying locations. This API does not preclude the definition of a more general location API for providing access to location information based on non-geoposition concepts of location." ---------------------------------- in addition to that, i am proposing to rename the API to "Geoposition API" to better reflect the scope and non-scope of the API. i think in many cases saying what you don't want to do is as important as saying what you want to do. another question i have is about the altitude. right now, it says "above the WGS84 geoid", however, this is a rather imprecise way of handling altitude (at least this is my limited understanding of how good the WGS84 geoid approximates earth's real shape). EGM96 altitudes are more precise, and there also are quite a large number of devices out there measuring barometric pressure for altitudes (which, if properly adjusted, is considerably more accurate than GPS-based altitudes). should these two alternative methods be excluded? i think both of these methods are pretty popular, so i think they should be supported in the API. cheers, dret.
Received on Friday, 14 November 2008 22:32:08 UTC