[Xastir] Projects we can learn from?

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 07:45:49AM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <gerry.creager at tamu.edu> flavor, containing:
> 
> projection via proj4 and gdal is handled well in mapserver.  We can thus 
> request a WMS image in WGS84 (lat-lon unproj) or mod xastir to cover 
> different projections and get "pretty" maps.  MY thought on this is that 
> most of our work w/ Xastir, especially the SAR, is local work and covers 
> a small enough area that planar flat projections work.  How many of us 
> are further north/south than 60 or so degrees?  So lat/lon unproj 
> representation is somewhere between good enough and a good idea.  And, 
> for all the work Curt's done on rhumb lines, etc., given a local area 
> planar workzone, simple geometries can accomplish most of our requirements.

With one important exception:  maps printed out out of xastir in its
unprojected coordinate system are almost useless to ground resources since 
it is not a conformal projection.  That is, if I were to hand a search
team a map from xastir they could not use it with their compass to transfer
bearings from map to field and back at all.  This is a major shortcoming
in my opinion, since it means that I always have to have some other way of
producing maps for such a use.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick