[Xastir-dev] Adding coordinate formats to Xastir

[Tapio Sokura]

Curt Mills wrote:
> If you wanted to add support for datum conversions into the
> coordinate calculator, I wouldn't be at all hurt.  I think that'd be
> great.

I imagine there would have to be some configurabitily on the displayed 
coordinate systems as well. An average Xastir user probably is not that 
interested in always seeing about four Finland-specific coordinate 
systems on the calculator :) Let alone tens or hundreds of other formats 
if/when other national systems are added.

I was wondering whether autodetecting the additional coordinate systems 
to display in the coordinate calculator based on the location of the 
station would work. I.e. if you had an object within a certain lat/long 
box (Finland), you would show Finnish coordinate systems in addition to 
the global systems. When you moved to Sweden, you would see Swedish 
national coordinates in addition to the global ones. Automatically 
detecting these could be hairy though.. at least near the borders you 
would probably have to display national formats of both sides. Letting 
the user select which formats he wants to see might be clearer.

Anyway easy coordinate conversions would be nice for SAR, where air 
units use WGS-84 geographical coordinates and ground crews usually use 
national grid systems (the KKJs) and you need to be able to convert 
between them. And I guess in the future we will also see a variant of 
UTM (ETRS-TM35FIN) added to the mix..

> I've long thought it would also be good to allow use of the
> coordinate calculator and free-form coordinate input anywhere in the
> Xastir code where a coordinate is called for.  In fact that's on the
> feature request list.

A calculator for output (=received/displayed) coordinates would be nice 
as well.

   Tapio