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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Help needed: how to write geographic coordinates in $YOUR
From:       "Friedrich W. H. Kossebau" <kossebau () kde ! org>
Date:       2011-11-16 18:30:50
Message-ID: 201111161930.51174.kossebau () kde ! org
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Hi Luciano,

Vendredi, le 11 novembre 2011, à 22:31, Luciano Montanaro a écrit:
> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau
> <kossebau@kde.org> wrote:
> > 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.

Hm, interesting, thanks for the hint. So German keyboards are quite an 
exception with having the  ° symbol as (shifted) key available, on the most 
upperright key of keyboard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Germany_and_Austria_.28but_not_Switzerland.29

Indeed than a problem for many :(

> 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?

Not sure. This would need to be known/learned/discovered by the people, also 
may be prone to input errors, due to being to close to each other (distance 
one typed/non-typed char).
Perhaps it would be good to ask in the computer-using Geographic communities 
how people deal with the fact that the degree symbol is not present in the 
default layout of their computers keyboards? 
Will broadcast this question a little in my next blog entry on the matter, but 
other people investigating in other directions are very welcome.

For now a workaround for many maybe that the parser also accepts coordinates 
without (one or all) symbols given, as long as there are matching directions 
and sane numbers. So you could just write 4 5 to mean 4 °5', if there are 
directions given as to make up the number scheme.

Cheers
Friedrich
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