[aprssig] APRS LAT/LONG standards

[Stephen H. Smith]

kf4otn at ericsatcom.net wrote:

>Bob,
>What pieces of software still do not use DEG and MIN?
>
>73s,
>Eric KF4OTN
>kf4otn at amsat.org
>http://www.ericsatcom.net
>
>  
>
Two that I use that DON't support the GPS standard DD MM.mmmm standard are:


MapInfo  (Professional GIS App)  -- uses ONLY the computationally-easy  
DD.dddddd  format for lists read in from dBase files, CSV text files or 
Excel spread sheets.



Microsoft Streets & Trips  and it's "bigger brother"  MS  MapPoint.  

Both programs can accept hand-entered points or import lists of points 
indentified by lat/long in either comma or tab-delimited lists or from 
Excel spread sheets..   Streets & Trips can import only one such list at 
a time, while MapPoint can handle multiple lists on separate layers 
CAD-style.  But maddeningly, they only accept      DD.dddddd     or  DD 
MM SS    but not the customary GPS     DD MM.mmmm   format!  And this 
despite having real-time support for GPS tracking!



On the other hand, the Delorme apps (Street Atlas and TopoUSA) deserve 
kudos for accepting all formats and they do it automatically!     The 
input parser recognizes the different formats, including accepting 
either N/S and E/W, or +/-,  for the lat/long values,   without user 
intervention.



Stephen H. Smith             wa8lmf (at) aol.com
                                                    
Home Page:                   http://wa8lmf.com

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