Re: CRS best practices: Google Geocoding API

Hmmm.

schema.org documents go to the trouble of saying "WGS 84" (although they
don't describe the units either).

So (as much as most of the Geo-establishment will flame me for it) should
we be saying:

"If neither your data nor the specification to which your data conforms to
defines the coordinate reference system used, then [it's safe to] assume
that the data with coordinate pairs uses longitude and latitude, defined in
decimal degrees, and data with coordinate positions that have three values
is longitude, latitude and elevation, defined in decimal degrees, decimal
degrees and meters above sea-level. In both cases, the WGS 84 [geodetic]
datum is assumed."

Let the barbecue begin.

Jeremy


On Fri, 3 Mar 2017 at 16:02 Ed Parsons <eparsons@google.com> wrote:

> I think you are experiencing the rest of the world view "that I just need
> to use Lat & Long - Period :-)"
>
> The use of WGS84 is documented here
> https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/maptypes if
> you go looking for it, must I would argue that most mainstream web
> developers don't need to know..
>
> btw this is also quite a nice explanation of tile based spatial indices ;-)
>
> Ed
>
>
>
> On Fri, 3 Mar 2017 at 15:14 Jeremy Tandy <jeremy.tandy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ed- in the introductory material you wrote about CRS you make a
> reference to the Google Geocoding API [1], in that its responses explicitly
> state Lat and Long rather than a coordinate pair of ambiguous order.
>
> Lat and Long are, by definition, angular measurements. OK - got that.
>
> But parsing through the API documentation, I can't see any reference to
> the units or datum which is used.
>
> Being a human, I'm prepared to guess that these are decimal degrees
> (because they look like floating point numbers). Easy for machines to
> figure that out too.
>
> As a human, I'm also prepared to guess that the API uses the WGS84. But
> that is a tricky leap for machines to work out.
>
> Does the API documentation say "WGS84" anywhere? If so, can you point me
> to it so I can refer to this explicitly? And if not, can you either justify
> why it doesn't matter, or get your colleagues to update the documentation
> (and then send me a link!).
>
> (I think that we've all agreed that it's dangerous to _assume_ a CRS :-) )
>
> Thanks, Jeremy
>
> [1]: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/intro
>
> --
>
> *Ed Parsons *FRGS
> Geospatial Technologist, Google
>
> Google Voice +44 (0)20 7881 4501
> www.edparsons.com @edparsons
>