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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Help needed: how to write geographic coordinates in $YOUR
From:       Luciano Montanaro <mikelima () gmail ! com>
Date:       2011-11-11 21:31:03
Message-ID: CALY5qtZOZqWTaLoTYqhRmnhi_RsJNeqTWE346VuOPx=WFy3_vw () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau
<kossebau@kde.org> wrote:

> AFAIK you are completely right, at least with latin-script-based languages it
> should be the degree sign (U+00B0) and the prime and double-prime as symbols,
> like you pointed to.
>
> But in reality people are entering these coordinates strings with their
> keyboards, and most of the keyboard layouts do not make it easy to enter these
> characters. So people fall back to use characters which look closest. Or do
> not even know about these special ones, but simply use those which look
> similar.
> Humans still can read that, and so should the computer (at least try).
>

Oh, of course, I was thinking of presentation, not input.


> For creating coordinates string in code for output, of course the official
> symbols should be used (hoping that the fonts used have these glyphs
> imported).
> But when reading strings as input, I guess you agree that the code should try
> as hard as possible to get what is meant :)

Yes, sure. If this is the case... the degree symbol is going to be a problem.
With my US-layout keyboard with a compose key I can get it (I guess)
with Compose,o,o ( °). I am not sure if there is a degree symbol on an
Italian keyboard, but anyway, it is probably difficult to type on most
keyboards.

I am not sure what would be an easy to type alias to  °, maybe simply an o?
or nothing, just a space? Or maybe a comma or a dot.
It could work...
4.5' would mean 4 °5 ´... while 4.5 would mean 4 °30 ´

What do you think?
>
> For some info what the parser is currently accepting see
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Marble/GeoDataCoordinatesTranslation#Coordinate_symbols
>
> Cheers
> Friedrich
>



-- 
Luciano Montanaro

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no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams
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