5 ms·
It really is a nightmare. It's like time zones, only when the datum is wrong, it's not necessarily immediately obvious what the correct one should be. People,
by nwallin 7y ago
It really is a nightmare. It's like time zones, only when the datum is wrong, it's not necessarily immediately obvious what the correct one should be.
People, even the ones who ought to know better, don't even seem to think it's necessary to specify their datum. It's bizarrely common to get a giant spreadsheet with coordinates in it and no datum. I've never seen data with its vertical datum specified.
Don't get me started on the situation in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
- scblock 7y agoAbsolutely this. Or I'll get a CAD export in "Wyoming State Plane" but no indication that the designer decided to work in inches, not (US survey) feet. I spend more time than I ever would have guessed playing datum detective.
- incompatible 7y agoThe problem is that the errors are too small for most users to care about. Few care if a date-time value from 2015 is a few hours out or if a location in Australia from 2008 is a metre out. So hardly anyone cares about finding a solution. The problem would be taken a lot more seriously if continental drift was 10m per year instead of a few cm.