Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 6

Unlinking coor

Egil had carefully arranged that {{coor}} would be the only place where the URL of his Mapsources script would be held. Netoholic started to copy this URL into other templates to reduce the number of levels of nesting. Would a few people please visit Template talk:coor#Discussion and confirm that I was right to tell him to stop it. -- RHaworth 16:56, 2005 July 12 (UTC)

re: Tool for the determination of coordinates and markup-building

There is a version for the english and german Wikipedia available.

Nice page... Can we somehow get a "coor dm" button here? (1 minute of latitude is always exactly one Nautical Mile, a useful unit of measure, (also: 0°1.0000'S = 1.0000NM = 2 x 1013 yd = 2 x 0.926 km) )

I added support for "coor dm" and "coor dms". HeinzJ 11:27, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I get a message "Click into the map above to get the coordinates.", but there is no map.--Patrick 14:43, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

if you did download the page to your computer, you should read the text of the htm-file. HeinzJ 06:54, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

How do we convert a bounding box of 2 coordinates into a map?

Over in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains, we are considering expanding our infobox to cover mountain ranges. The natural location data for ranges would be a bounding box of lat/long, rather than a single point (perhaps with a scale).

Is there any way to modify the coor template & web site to accept a bounding box? The bounding box can be converted back to a center location and scale. I would just hate to have Wikipedia editors do this conversion manually.

Discussion about this is starting at Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Mountains#Include mountain ranges?

-- hike395 07:19, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Which geographical coordinate can be chosen when there are different ones?

Which geographical coordinate can be chosen when there are different ones? For example, for Drygalski Island, there are several different geographical coordinates (see Talk:Drygalski Island and Talk:Geographic coordinates (obtaining)). Are there guidelines or hints which one to choose? Which geographical coordinate is the most correct one? -- Citylover 12:34, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

They are not very different, it is just that there is one that is represented as decimal degrees, one as degrees and minutes. For an island with a certain size, as long as they point to a location reasonably in the middle of the island, there is really no preference for one over the other. Personally I may prefer the degree and minutes, but probably we should have sort of Wiki-decision on which one to use. The only fixed limitation is a referrence to WGS84, but for a reasonably large island it would not make much difference any way. -- Egil 16:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

templates and infoboxes

I noticed that Template:Airport infobox does not provide a link from the coordinates of the airport. This wikiproject says that infobox coordinates should be defined in terms of Template:coor and suggests Template:Infobox Dutch municipality 3 as an example. Unfortunately, that example does not use Template:coor any more. Is this a job for someone who understands the intricacies of Template:coor, and perhaps D6 bot if needed to format the calls to the airport infobox? I'm happy to help if required. --Scott Davis ^Talk 08:37, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Swiss town may show how it works. Basically, you'd need to add something like

{{coor dms|{{{latd}}}|{{{latm}}}|{{{lats}}}|{{{latNS}}} |{{{lond}}}|{{{lonm}}}|{{{lons}}}|{{{lonEW}}}|type:airport}}

to the template and, e.g. on London Heathrow Airport, replace

coordinates=51° 28' 39" N

0° 27' 41" W|

with

latd=51|latm=28|latd=39|latNS=N|

lond=0|lonm=27|lons=41|lonEW=W|

I might try to use D6 next week to do the conversion on the different airport articles, if it's ok with the editors of Template:Airport infobox. -- User:Docu

Docu, if you're still willing to make that change and automate the migration then that would be great - yes please. Thanks/Wangi 16:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

What is current status of this migration ? --TAG 13:36, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Japanese map services - Tokyo datum

Hallo,

I am a Japanese user. I'm very interested in this project.

We have 2 reference frames in Japan. One is international one, Japanese Geodetic Datum2000, almost equal to ITRF and WGS84. Onother one is Tokyo Datum (Tokyo 97), old one. The both differences of latitude and longitude are about 8-15 seconds. Because some map services for Japan including Google map use Tokyo Datum, I'd like to get Tokyo Datum from the project. Could you arrange the project?

The data to convert are:

• http://vldb.gsi.go.jp/pub/trns96/params/xyz2xyz.pick.par
• http://vldb.gsi.go.jp/sokuchi/coordinates/localtrans.html

--? 13:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Coordinates at the top of the article

German

Has anyone noticed the rather nice placement of coordinates on the German Wiki, using the template de:Vorlage:Geokoordinate, for example on de:Sony-Center. -- Solipsist 15:29, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Very elegant solution, indeed. I have noticed that perhaps having coordinates as part of running text is not always appropriate — this concept really solves all of that. -- Egil 05:43, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Germans have been changing theirs a bit, and have replaced "Geokoordinate" with "Koordinate Artikel" that uses: span id="coordinates" class="coordinates" style="white-space:nowrap;" William Allen Simpson 02:15, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

• de:Vorlage:Koordinate Artikel
• de:Vorlage:Koordinate Text Artikel

Portuguese

The Portuguese Wikipedia has implemented a wonderful solution I would like to see emulated here in the English Wikipedia, where coordinate info is placed at the top/right of articles. See for yourself here. It seems fairly easy to implement, but we probably need an admin or a developer to get it work. What does everyone think? Isn't it a great idea? —Cantus…☎ 04:27, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

It's nice, though I don't quite like the way coordinates are specified: it adds the coordinates twice: "{{geocoordenadas|39_21_00_N_09_24_00_W|39º 21' N 09º 24' O}}". In cases where the coordinates are in a template/infobox, it might be easy to add/replace them with this way of displaying them. BTW: Oddly the coordinates aren't available in the print version (it works here though). -- User:Docu

The Germans did the same. I moved that talk entry down here, so that they can be talked about together.

The Portugese uses: div id="coordinates" class="noprint" p class="coordinates" William Allen Simpson 02:15, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

• pt:Predefinição:Geocoordenadas

Dutch wikipedia

At the Dutch WP, we have implemented the same options, although we allow them both, and have different templates. 2 templates are implemented in nl:Ei_van_Kortrijk :

• You can see coords at the top, which should be implemented as much as possible when the coords are relevant for the entire article, since they are in a unobtrusive location. (implementation is not optimal yet however, coords are specified twice)
• In the external links section, there's another link... this template allow to link to kvaleberg sources as an external link : this may be usefull to draw a little more attention to the link if a map is relevant in the external links section, and you may want some text instead of purely the coords
• Of course, we also have the normal templates like the ones used here, these allow to actually adds the coords visually and link the them within the text or an infobox

--LimoWreck 09:59, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

• nl:Sjabloon:Coördinaten
• nl:Sjabloon:Coördinaten-inline

Implementation

It does mean going through and fixing the text by hand (since it would not longer be embedded in the article). I'd prefer the top placement to be the method used here, too, but don't see the need for the second "display" copy of the coordinates.

Also, their standard solution was to put the template at the end footer of the article, rather than the top (although it displays at the top). For other templates here, there is a hint on standard placement. Placement of the template at the start of the article would be best.

--William Allen Simpson 11:10, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

• Although interest was expressed, I didn't realize that nobody else had taken on this task. I hoped that somebody would edit the style sheet once we pointed to how others had done this. Perhaps we don't have any admins here? So, I submitted Bug 4719: RFE: geo coordinates in page title on all (common) en: .css.

--William Allen Simpson 09:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

• What should we call the top template? {{geo title d}}, {{geo title dm}}, {{geo title dms}}? {{title d}}, {{title dm}}, {{title dms}}?

-William Allen Simpson 10:03, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, they have variants that are text-inline as well, such as de:Template:Koordinate Text Artikel, so that placing coordinates in the text automagically puts them in the header as well.

As for implementation, it would be easy to add the code to the existing {{coor d}}, {{coor dm}}, and {{coor dms}} templates. A separate family (perhaps called {{coord header d}} and so on?) could be made that don't have an inline portion and only put it in the header. I have a working example at {{coorHeader}} that doesn't require any changes to the site-wide stylesheets. — Saxifrage ✎ 11:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

First of all, thanks for the example template! I had no idea that one could use absolute in such a way.

Still, given that 3 (and counting) different sites use "id=coordinates" it shouldn't be too hard to add that to en: .css. I'm going to post a help query at the village pump....

I like the Dutch solution best. (I just moved it above.) When you want it in the title, use the title version. When you want it in the text, use the inline version (our existing {{coor}}, {{coor d}}, etc.) When you want both, use both.

--William Allen Simpson 12:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm partial to the German solution, but it would depend on what exactly developed as a standard: the German solution would be appropriate if we want coordinates to always appear at the top; the Dutch solution would be if we only wanted to encourage this usage. I just occurred to me though, that a big advantage to the Dutch way is that we could build consensus for adoption on a per-article basis and let it grow from there. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:44, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

If by "German solution" you mean changing the current (inline) templates to put the coordinates at the top: that would cause serious problems at e.g. List of settlements in Utrecht, and other pages with multiple instances of these templates. -- Eugene van der Pijll 22:41, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, that's an extremely good argument for making them separate! I'm convinced. — Saxifrage ✎ 02:01, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

For the purpose of extrating coordinates to use them in Google Earth or WikiMiniAtlas this list is rather unfortunate. The coordinates should rather be put into the appropriate articles, otherwise we'll end up with a ton of markers on the map just pointing to the listpage. Then using the coord_title templates should be pushed, it is a really nice feature in the german (and portugese and dutch) wikipedia and I don't quite understand the controversy around it in en:wp.--Dschwen 10:47, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, a note on implementation. The other languages use duplicated parameters to allow passing NSEW to kvaleberg, while displaying the initials of their own language. Can they/we use {{qif}} to compare strings and substitute the correct parameters? As Docu (talk · contribs) above, I'd prefer to keep a single set of coordinates. I'm not sure this is an issue here, but might be a thought to help coordinate among the *pedia.

--William Allen Simpson 13:09, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

This should be doable using {{switch}}. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:44, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

It turns out (unsuprisingly—I should have expected it) that the template as-is breaks when pages are viewed with skins other than Monobook, such as the significantly-popular Classic. [1] This means that moving to this style of coordinates template does require Developer support, in that we need to get the CSS out of the template and into Mediawiki:Monobook.css so that it plays nice with the other skins. Until such a thing happens, {{CoorHeader}} should be considered an experimental template. — Saxifrage ✎ 03:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Consensus

This seems to have moved to implementation but I think I may have missed the discussion on whether it was a good idea. I would have voiced opposition at that time had I known. I think that for some articles, forcing the coords to display at the top of the article is not appropriate. Many articles I've had a hand in use {{Coor title d}} embedded inside {{Geolinks-US-streetscale}}. There doesn't seem to be a clear process for not usiing that nesting where it's not appropriate and I don't want to fork either one. So how should I proceed? Just lump it and consider it a done deal? ++Lar: t/c 14:12, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The existence of the coor title family of templates is well supported. Including it in other templates enjoys less support. I personally don't think the blanket usage that happens by including it in various infoboxes and geographical templates is advisable and I've voiced opposition to this. Ideally, to my mind, it would be an independent template that could be added to pages that obviously benefit from it, and could be left off pages that really don't need it. The template family needs more exposure to determine the opinion of the wider community, and unfortunately this Project page is very sleepy. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)