[georss] Commas and radius in the spec.

[Carl Reed OGC Account]

FYI, the OGC (in GML), OASIS, the IETF, OMA, and ISO all specify the use of white space only as the delimiter for expressing coordinate pairs (whether lat/long or other CRS). For the purpose of clarity and alignment with what appears to be international best practice in the standards world, I would recommend removing the use of comma and using white space only.

Cheers

Carl

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mikel Maron 
  To: georss at lists.eogeo.org 
  Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 7:56 AM
  Subject: Re: [georss] Commas and radius in the spec.


   
  > 1. In http://www.georss.org/simple.html it is stated in 3rd para, that:

  > 

  > << 

  > Some publishers and users may prefer to seperate lat/long pairs by a comma rather than whitespace. This is permissible 


  > in Simple; GeoRSS parsers should just treat commas as whitespace. 

  > << 

  >  

  > I would clarify what is meant by the usage of commas: Is it meant only for Simple (or for all GeoRSS parsers)? Is it 


  > permissible between *and* within pairs? My proposal: 

  > 

  > >> 

  > In Simple, commas are allowed instead of white spaces in order to separate lat/long pairs (like this <georss:point> 


  > 45.256, -71.92</georss:point> or this <georss:line>45.256 -110.45, 46.46 -109.48, 43.84 -109.86</georss:line>). 


  > Therefore, GeoRSS parsers of Simple should treat a comma as a white space. 

  >> 

  >



  After a brief discussion, I included this clause in the Simple spec. I thought folks might prefer to use the comma .. but actually in practice (short as it has been), I haven't seen any use of comma to seperate pairs. Perhaps it should be rethought. Perhaps this is just adding complication, and a cluase that some GeoRSS aggregators might not even bother implementing. 







  > 2. Are commas allowed in lat/lon values? 

  > => I think not.



  Permitting commas within lat/lon values was the idea behind using whitespace in coordinate pairs. I can see how it clashes with #1, if #1 continues to be permitted.






  Though, again, perhaps this is an unnecessary complication. For GeoRSS .. could the world be satisfied with "." specified decimals.





  > 3. In http://www.georss.org/model.html there seems that the explanation of the attribute 'radius' is missing. This 


  > is just for completeness and to be consistent with figure 1 in top.



  http://www.georss.org/trac/trac.cgi/ticket/4


  -Mikel





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