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Improving Mindat.orgLocation Maps Pages Could Use A Change

17th Dec 2011 01:11 UTCWilliam W. Besse Expert

The Location Maps pages format could use a change to make them more user friendly. I sometimes like to do map research outside of Mindat, so I copy the Latitude & Longitude out and paste it in other map browsers, usually Google Maps or Google Earth, but I have tried this on MSN Maps and Yahoo! Maps as well.

None of these sites would use the WGS84 format so I will talk no further on that one for this purpose. I did reach Manila, Philippines a couple of times when I put in the WGS84 for "Red Cloud Mine, Silver District, Trigo Mts, La Paz Co., Arizona, USA", but that was about it.

Google Maps, Google Earth, MSN Maps and Yahoo! Maps do not like the other formats either..."AS IS". The problem is the central colon (:). If this is replaced by a comma (,) then they work and you get where you want to go.

Well they don't all work alike. Yahoo! renders the Decimal Degrees but not the Degrees plus Decimal Minutes and the Decimal Degrees was off in location by a kilometer or more (Again using the Red Cloud). I would just ignore Yahoo! Maps.

My suggestion would be to format the Location Maps pages Latitude & Longitude with a comma.

Bill

17th Dec 2011 01:56 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

> None of these sites would use the WGS84 format

The WGS84 datum is used by Google Maps. It's one of the reasons why we've standardized on it.

I've changed the maps.php page to use a comma.

Jolyon

17th Dec 2011 02:51 UTCWilliam W. Besse Expert

Thanks for the change, Jolyon

You say that Google Maps uses the WGS84, but when I copy and paste it into Google Maps it does not work. Is it used on the back-end but not the front?

Bill

17th Dec 2011 02:57 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Perhaps our coordinates are wrong.

17th Dec 2011 02:59 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager

Personally, I never use the standard datums such as WGS84, NAD27, etc... in favour of UTM coordinates. For my line of work, they are far more accurate than any of the lat/long readings.

17th Dec 2011 04:32 UTCJim Bean 🌟

Many thanks for the comma, Jolyon! Today is a good day for OCD mineral location researchers.

17th Dec 2011 07:40 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager

I agree with Paul that most jurisdictions have moved to UTM coordinates and maybe we should show them also. There would be a need to show the datum and grid used though. Lat/longs are simpler on a world-wide scale.

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