[georss] Transport of Toponyms with GeoRSS

[Andrew Turner]

Carl Reed OGC Account  wrote:
>
> Which brings us back around to the discussions on how (or if) we should
> handle addresses in georss. Addresses are a very human readable form of
> location reference. So, as Ron points out, are meets and bounds (start at
> the corner of oak and main and go one block west). This is why the IETF
> supports both coordinates (lat-long) and civil addresses (which include
> placenames) in all of their new standards that deal with location -
> especially those for emergency services. Folks on a phone will speak in
> addresses. The GPS enabled phone speaks in lat-long (WGS 84 2D)


What seems the most pragmatic is to keep GeoRSS Simple to just that
"simple". Allow for an option attribute "name", similar to
featuretypetag, elev, et al. Let users decide how/what they want to
put in that information. Either a full-out address, or just a location
name.

<georss:point name="My House">lat lon</georss:point>
<georss:point name="80 Rivercreek Rd., Danville, VA">lat lon</georss:point>

Then let GML or another namespace provide/handle more complex address encoding.

The simplicity of GeoRSS is exactly what leads to its widespread
adoption by the general community. I've seen non-GIS experts add
GeoRSS to their feeds in minutes. If the process had been longer/more
involved, they probably wouldn't have added it, or put it on the
"future features list".

-- 
Andrew Turner
ajturner at highearthorbit.com        42.4266N x 83.4931W
http://highearthorbit.com              Northville, Michigan, USA