Template talk:GeoTemplate/Archive 8

Can the icon be removed?
Can the oversized and not-so-beautiful icon http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Erioll_world.svg/18px-Erioll_world.svg.png be removed from coordinates? Or can it be resized to match the text size better? Maybe or so? Cush (talk) 13:29, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


 * It could perhaps be scaled down a few pixels to match other inline icons at 10-15px. Any other change is subjective and should not be an editor choice. To change the settings for yourself only, see WikiMiniAtlas and discussion at Template talk:Coord/Archive 5 and Template talk:Coord/Archive 5. --Para (talk) 14:02, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * So will it be scaled down? Who can do this? Cush (talk) 09:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Now what? Is there now a way to hide or at least change the ugly icon? Cush (talk) 16:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * On a related note, should GeoHack's page mention someplace that clicking on the globe icon will do something? At present many browsers only make the GeoHack hyperlink visible but it is not apparent that the icon has a hyperlink. (I omit the mouseover message because that is unlikely to be visible unless one suspects a link lurks)  (SEWilco (talk) 16:02, 23 November 2007 (UTC))

UK national grid references and GeoHack
Two issues with GeoHack and British national grid references: one minor, one more major:

(1) Minor one first. UK grid positions are most often quoted as six-figure references, eg TQ 302797. GeoHack is giving ten figure references, eg TQ3016879678. This is fine, the extra precision is good. But for readability, a couple of extra spaces would be nice, to present the ten figure reference as two five figure groups, eg TQ 30168 79678. This also makes it much easier to instantly see the six figure reference contained within.

(2) More serious issue. I've also flagged this at WT:GEO. The GeoHack converter seems to be slightly off. The GeoHack converter seems to be consistently returning a grid reference a couple of hundred metres to the West and the North of where they should be. Eg 51.50056°N, -0.12444°W, just to the East of the clock tower of Big Ben in Westminster, gets converted to TQ 30168 79678, the intersection of Bridge Street and Parliament Square about 200m away. According to Streetmap.co.uk's converter, the correct conversion should be TQ 30281 79624.


 * Update: It's been suggested at WT:GEO that this may be because GeoHack is converting as from OSGB36 lat/longs, rather than the WGS84 it claims. Jheald (talk) 14:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jheald (talk) 09:46, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Geohack.php refuses to process the double quote character, %22 -- barf spew ensues...
See my note in the Village Pump. I discovered accidentally that the toolserver URL generates a spew of warnings when the %22 is present in the pagename parameter value.

 --Mareklug talk 04:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Reported at https://jira.ts.wikimedia.org/browse/MAGNUS-33. --Para (talk) 09:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Great Britain first
Why is the "Great Britain" section now before the Global Systems?? Who the heck needs coordinates in Great Britain?? Cush (talk) 22:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Someone edited the template to do that but it looks like a mistake. I think that will be fixed soon by someone.  (SEWilco (talk) 23:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC))

Additional coordinate systems
Can we add MGRS and Maidenhead coordinates to this template? --  Denelson83  00:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Well? Is this going to be implemented? --  Denelson83  21:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be good to hear of a use case for them before anyone gets interested in implementation. People also seem to prefer to see the page as a link collection rather than a source of information, so the inclusion of other coordinate systems might not be appropriate, except perhaps at a section that has a service where they are used. Maybe the UTM coordinates should be moved elsewhere as well? Anyway, if the use case is just to see the coordinates in other systems, you could just find a converter or create one yourself, and then link to it from this template. --Para (talk) 22:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I've implemented the Maidenhead converter as Coor Maidenhead. --  Denelson83  06:04, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Geopage does not set the character set to UTF-8
In the last day, the character set is not defined to the browser by the script to be UTF-8, so the browser is using its own default which creates garbage on the screen if its not UTF-8. -- 76.30.255.191 (talk) 22:11, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FYI, I think I'm having this problem, too. The degree symbols and some other ones (Unicode?) weren't showing right; I was able to fix the problem by resetting the encoding (in Firefox, View > Character Encoding > Auto-Detect > Universal). Jason McHuff (talk) 12:28, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now. --Magnus Manske (talk) 11:30, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

type:village
Could you define a type:village having the same resolution as type:airport. Using the airport type seems to be ackward for a village. 79.180.24.164 (talk) 08:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Make it actually usefull
I don't know who magnus is and what his toys are doing on pages, but it would be nice if he would fix this so it actually inserts proper html, meaning something i can copy a paste and use elsewhere, instead of badly aligned floating stuff which overlaps other things and is hard to read a lot of the time. How about a link to a google earth KMZ file - that would be usefull.--IceHunter (talk) 09:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? Cush (talk) 09:47, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe this refers to the current Wikipedia practice of displaying coordinates at the top of articles with absolute CSS positioning relative to the top of the page, from MediaWiki:Monobook.css #coordinates, and the absence of direct map service links. It has nothing to do with Magnus, his toys, or GeoTemplate, but with Wikipedia and MediaWiki. The CSS does indeed make copying the coordinates harder, which is unfortunate, but I'm not aware of any way to display the coordinates better on the Wikipedia side using the current MediaWiki installation. If anyone has a solution in mind to use editor defined and wikitext filled elements outside the body of the page, Village pump (technical) and Bugzilla may help. IceHunter should also note that by clicking the coordinates you get a proper html page with all the links you could possibly want, including the Google Earth one. --Para (talk) 00:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

MSN Maps links and region codes
The URL used here for MSN Maps contains a parameter named regn1 which is assigned a numeric value. The link found on the GeoTemplate page under the Global systems heading uses regn1=2 for World Atlas maps (equivalent to L=WLD in a different format of the URL that can be seen by choosing a larger map size).
 * Format used here for "type:city": http://maps.msn.com/map.aspx?lats1=50.083333&lons1=14.416667&alts1=14&regn1=2
 * MSN format with different parameter names: http://maps.msn.com/map.aspx?C=50.083333,14.416667&A=170&L=WLD
 * Note: A=170 instead of 14 because World Atlas maps can be viewed from altitudes of (closest to farthest): 170, 250, 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, 8000, 11000, 15000, 20000, or 30000.

The following regions have more detailed maps which include roads, railroads, airports, lakes, rivers, etc. and can be viewed from altitudes of 1, 3, 6, 12, 25, 50, 150, 800, 2000, 7000, or 12000.
 * regn1=0 or L=USA for North America
 * Detailed maps are available for the United States, Canada and Mexico. They do not appear for Greenland and areas in the Caribbean or Central America.
 * regn1=1 or L=EUR for Europe
 * Detailed maps are available for most countries in Europe, but not for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro or Serbia.
 * regn1=3 or L=AP for Australia & New Zealand
 * The MSN Maps web site allows searching for locations in Australia, but maps for New Zealand also display in more detail when using this value; see the example below for Auckland. Detailed maps do not appear for other areas of Oceania.
 * regn1=4 or L=BR for Brazil
 * Detailed maps do not appear for other areas of South America.

The following examples compare the map generated by the Global systems link to a map generated using the appropriate region code:
 * Mexico City, Mexico at 19.4°N, -99.11667°W . Compare map using region 2 (World) to map using region 0 (North America).
 * Prague, Czech Republic at 50.08333°N, 14.41667°W . Compare map using region 2 (World) to map using region 1 (Europe).
 * Auckland, New Zealand at -36.85°N, 174.78333°W . Compare map using region 2 (World) to map using region 3 (Australia/New Zealand).
 * São Paulo, Brazil at -23.53333°N, -46.61667°W . Compare map using region 2 (World) to map using region 4 (Brazil).

Currently, the following country section on GeoTemplate contain a local link for MSN Maps: United States (.com), Canada (.ca), Australia (.au), Brazil (.br), and in Europe: Austria (.at), France (.fr), Germany (.de), Great Britain (.uk), Italy (.it), Spain (.es). For other European countries, there was previously a link under the Europe heading, but it was removed in a revision on 23:14, 12 July 2007. Similarly, the North America section had a link that was removed in a revision on 10:16, 13 July 2007. To allow viewing the detailed MSN Maps for other areas, I see three possible solutions that only involve editing Template:GeoTemplate:
 * 1) Restore the removed links under North America and Europe and add a new one under Oceania. This works but the Europe and Oceania sections appear rather far down on the page.
 * 2) Insert links under each country heading. This would create a lot of extra links, but would work well with the feature that places the country-specific links at top of page.
 * 3) Update the current link under the Global systems heading to include links to detailed maps for each region.

I've implemented the third solution. -- Zyxw (talk) 12:58, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Stable toolserver
The wikimedia.de people have created a Stable Toolserver mainly so that edit counter and GeoHack don't go down with everything else. Kolossos and I have signed on as maintainers for GeoHack. My eventual goals are: If you have any suggestion feel free to post them here. —Dispenser (talk) 00:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * XHTML compliance
 * User interface improvements
 * Decoupling from Magnus's framework so it can run standalone
 * Interwiki language support
 * Better default scaling based on number of sigfigs
 * Possibly some graphical glints, like a the globe icon or background-image is the side where coordinate appears


 * Please use a subversion repository for the code and commit all changes there, instead of editing the files directly. More eyes to review changes and the code in general is a good thing. Other than that, I can only think of one more goal:
 * Work the code towards becoming a MediaWiki extension
 * Otherwise an improvement I've had in mind which doesn't affect the main code a lot but is big for users, would be a Javascript tool that allows people to move their preferred services higher or lower on the list and save the offset to a cookie for the next time. This would allow people to easily find the services they're used to, and on the side maybe give us some information on which services are used the most, and how interface changes affect that. The user interface could be just small up and down arrows at the right side of every line. Before that it would be good if we could move to one of the proposed GeoTemplate redesigns where each service has only one line and the cruft is dropped. --Para (talk) 01:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Or instead of working toward making a new extension, work on merging this and the existing   extension.   -- SEWilco (talk) 17:29, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Right. The current GeoHack consists of a forked part of Extension:Gis (source) slightly modified, which is the Geo, and the framework Magnus wrote to run that on the toolserver, including all the added functionality, the Hack. Some of Dispenser's goals would be for the hack part, as they are duplicating what MediaWiki would do if the code was being run as an extension, so it would be good to keep separate from the geo part everything that isn't directly related to coordinates or map sources. --Para (talk) 20:28, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

GeoHack address name
At the current moment the tool's address resides at something like. As the word 'hack' has general negative connotation and/or affiliation to hackers. So we are looking for a good name before the stable version goes "live". —Dispenser (talk) 00:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Names for to replace the Geohack name (atleast in the URL)
 * geo-provider
 * geo-splitter
 * geosources
 * geomaps
 * geolist
 * geo
 * mapssources
 * maps
 * maplist


 * I think the mapsources name from Egil's original extension is still fine. A  url would be pretty and doesn't need any magic. One without the last slash would be even prettier, but requires help from toolserver admins.  --Para (talk) 01:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be great if someone could drop me a line if the future URL is known (and before a changed GeoTemplate shows up on my watchlist :-) ) so that I can add it to the WikiMiniAtlas list of recognized URLs. --Dschwen 02:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Pinpoint- I use geohack when I want to pinpoint a location. Other advantages Pinpoint is a redlink as is Pin Point in :en: wiki and :commons: ClemRutter (talk) 16:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think mapsources is properly descriptive. Pinpoint is nice as an action term, but what is presented is a list of map sources (I'm including geo images as being maps).  -- SEWilco (talk) 16:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The more I think, the more I like pinpoint. It always seems that open source programmer are always attempting to describe the functionality or history of the program with the name.  Its 8 characters so there's no OS naming limitation and it doesn't conflict with any names.  And for the sake of understanding current and historical the program will remain named GeoHack, but the service (i.e. copy running on stable) will be called pinpoint.  I'll also try and figure out a nice format for the URLs.  — Dispenser 02:45, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

openstreetmap.org
I've updated the link to OpenStreetMap to include a marker. In case the patch for OSM zoom levels is applied and I forget about this, somebody please modify this link to read 'zoom={osmzoom}'. Also, would people object to moving the OSM link to the Global systems section, perhaps near WikiMapia? Rvollmert (talk) 12:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Done (to both). Rvollmert (talk) 10:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)