Template talk:Ordnance Survey coordinates/Archive 1

Irish Grid Reference
Get-a-map for Irish grid refrences exists see clifden it uses the A to Y notation followed Km North and East.


 * but is not yet supported by template:oscoor for example, see --Red King 17:12, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Which alternative?
The instructions above say use one of the templates which use this one, but cites no examples. Andy Mabbett 13:24, 6 September 2005 (UTC)


 * There is good list of them at template talk:gbmapping but for the definitive list use Whatlinkshere and then your browser's search facility to find "late:". -- RHaworth 16:35:31, 2005-09-06 (UTC)

Use from external website
It would be wonderful to be able to use this (or something like it) from an external website, so that the link would be to, say
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/Oscoor?SK123456

which would return the Wikipedia page with links to the various mapping services (and thereby promote Wikipedia!). Andy Mabbett 13:27, 6 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The present external destination is liable to change without notice. But I intend to keep
 * http://www.rhaworth.myby.co.uk/oscoor_a.htm?SK176462_region:GB (more interesting than SK123456 - )
 * available indefinitely and compatible with the present parameters. To underscore this, I have just changed Elmbridge to use it. Feel free to use - it helps my Google rating! -- RHaworth 16:25:28, 2005-09-06 (UTC)


 * If you want to feel a little more independant of my site, and especially if you are creating lots of links:
 * copy http://www.rhaworth.myby.co.uk/rwh/go_egil.htm from my site and put it on your site
 * you can then create much simpler map links in the form &lt;A href="go_egil.htm?TL256338"> for example
 * Gosh. A place that admits that clots live there.
 * That way, if anything happens and oscoor_a.htm moves for some reason, you will only have one file that needs changing. On the minus side, this means that you will have not one but two layers of back button breaking improper redirects. (Sorry I aint got into any other sort of scripts yet.) -- RHaworth 23:07:26, 2005-09-06 (UTC)

I've finally (!) gotten around to copying the page as you suggest, and it works well. Thank you very much. I've updated all the links on the main "county" pages on http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/ and will do the stragglers as I as I revisit the pages. I've also added a "noscript" section, for people without JavaScript enabled. The back button works fine, in Firefox 2. Andy Mabbett 13:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * A new tool. I have taken RHaworthcode, rewritten parts and added a new user interface. See here. This was in response to the need to add inline co- ord templates to the page River Bourne, where both the OSGB and WGS84 were needed to maintain compatibility with page and the reference book, I did not want to go serverside. I have posted a beta version and am open to suggestion for improvements.ClemRutter (talk) 22:58, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Link to geograph
Can you add in link to Geograph (UK photographs of every 1km grid square) Using their browse.php seems to take an OS Grid ref

eg. http://www.geograph.co.uk/browse.php?gridref=SK176462 to use the example above.

As the photos are under cc-by-sa-2.0 they can be used in articles

-- Elwell 11:28, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Now done - and it did not require an edit to a protected page. -- RHaworth 06:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


 * can link like http://www.geograph.co.uk/gridref/SK176462 if that helps

datum
For those interested in fine detail, be aware that the lat/long calculated by this resource are for the OSGB 36 datum. This will give slight errors if they are used in resources that expect WGS 84. For example if we ask multimap to show us Mavis Enderby using her grid reference directly we get this. But if we (select the "Multimap - with circle (using lat/long)" option) the circle falls about 100 metres away.

Fortunately Template:coor assumes that lat/long are in OSGB 36 when it converts them back to a Grid Ref, so we do not get any "drift". -- RHaworth 06:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


 * This means that Template:Oscoor, and all the templates that use it, e.g. Template:gbmapping, are of little use if you want to pinpoint the exact location of a building or street. And it means that the grid references generated via Template:coor are also inaccurate by 100m or so. However, User:The Anomebot2 (a bot) is correctly converting grid references found within articles into WGS-84 latitude/longitude in . Such articles then contain two geo refs which are displayed as about 100 metres apart.


 * What are needed are routines to convert OSGB36 lat/longs to and from WGS-84 lat/longs.--Dr Greg 18:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * This conversion uses a Helmert Transform. See http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/LatLongConvertCoords.html, or http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/gps/information/coordinatesystemsinfo/guidecontents/, for example. --Dr Greg 12:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * See discussion at WT:GEO here, which includes links to re-usable code. The OSGB36 output is already linking to the wrong spot on GoogleMaps and WikiMapia.  If GeoHack is upgraded to do what it claims it does (ie translate from WGS84), this will result in it linking OSGB36 output to the same wrong spot on Streetmap etc (and the Grid refs won't be round-tripping properly).


 * So can we change the oscoor back end, to give WGS84 co-ordinates? Jheald (talk) 14:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki
If the external resource is moved, it will be necessary also to change:
 * nl:Sjabloon:Oscoor
 * sv:mall:oscoor
 * ru:Шаблон:Oscoor
 * commons:template:oscoor
 * Template:Gbmaprim at welshpedia.co.uk
 * Template:Oscoor at RHaworth.EditThis.info
 * Yellowikis:template:oscoor
 * Egil's GB map sources page - now defunct

Category
Why is this template not in Category:Coordinates templates? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 11:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Fixed
At last, the resource has been fixed to generate WGS84 co-ordinates. To test: try a full "10 figure" grid ref such as:. In the GeoHack page, select the StreetMap link. In StreetMap go to: "Click here to convert coordinates". This should give a difference of no more than 1 metre.

Please note that GeoHack's back-conversion from lat/long to grid ref has not yet been fixed. So the grid ref displayed and those links which use grid ref, eg. Ordnance Survey Get-a-map are still wrong. The corrected modules are available here - anyone with ToolServer rights willing to install them for me? &mdash; RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 22:48, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That's good news! The matter has been discussed on de wp with User:Kolossos, and I hope that he will implement the back-conversion on the ToolServer soon. – I must disappoint you about "this should give a difference of no more than 1 metre": The datum shift is realized by the Helmert transformation, and "for the transformation from WGS84 (ETRS89) to OSGB36 in Great Britain, using a single Helmert transformation will give errors of up to 4 metres, depending where in the country the points of interest are" . But of course that's good enough. --Telford (talk) 16:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

External link failed
I've found that clicking a grid ref in any page such as Oxford railway station is failing today, whilst it worked yesterday. Pages using Template:Gbmaprim, such as Template:Gbmapscaled (which is called from Template:Infobox GB station) all come eventually to this template, which tries to access http://rhaworth.com/os/coor_g.php?pagename=Oxford_railway_station&params=SP504063_region:GB_scale:25000 and the error thrown is:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /os/coor_g.php on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

--Redrose64 (talk) 11:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Whilst the above was resolved on 1 August 2009, it's failed again, when accessing http://rhaworth.com/os/coor_g.php?pagename=Oxford_railway_station&params=SP504063_region:GB_scale:25000 the error thrown is:


 * Connection Interrupted
 * The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.
 * The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please try again.


 * --Redrose64 (talk) 15:34, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I promise that I will really try to transfer the resource on to the toolserver in the next few days. (It still leaves me with the problem of what to do with my own pages on that server.) &mdash; RHaworth 22:24, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Currently working --Redrose64 (talk) 20:41, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Error message "Can't connect to local MySQL server"
The en.wikipedia article Croesor is trying to use the following external link generated by oscoor:



The result was the following error (which I've modified slightly to simulate the linkable url)...

Warning: mysql_connect [ function.mysql-connect ]: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111) in /www/110mb.com/r/h/a/w/o/r/t/h/rhaworth/htdocs/os/coor_g.php on line 107 Could not connect: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111)

If you click the function.mysql-connect link you will get a "404 not-found" error. Can anyone help figure what is going on? --Itsfullofstars (talk) 00:32, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Appears to be working at present --Redrose64 (talk) 12:03, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's working for me now, too. I guess there was some transitory downtime for some reason. --Itsfullofstars (talk) 18:23, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Kaput

 * Discussion moved from documentation talk page Template talk:OS coord/doc to here. Please reply below. — Richardguk (talk) 22:38, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Template takes us to a broken toolserver page :( --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:44, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not broken; it's just temperamental. Clicking an OS grid ref sometimes throws the error "Error 400 Bad Request"; when that happens, click the "back" button of your browser and try again. I've just tried some 20 pages with different gridrefs; some went straight to the GeoHack page as intended; some took two or three attempts (the most was five). -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:09, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki
When the external resource is moved, it will be necessary also to change: I have had toolserver rights for some months now so I have very little excuse for not transferring the resiurce to the toolserver. &mdash; RHaworth 15:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * all the templates listed in the interwikis
 * Template:oscoor at welshpedia.co.uk
 * Template:Oscoor at RHaworth.EditThis.info
 * Yellowikis:template:oscoor - ?now defunct

Traffic
Logs of calls to the external resource can be found: &mdash; RHaworth 11:39, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * here for 2011 Feb 12 onwards
 * here for 2010 Sept onwards with traffic getting less after 2011 Feb 12 as links are updated and spiders become aware of the move

GeoGroup
Is it possible to get locationsusing this template to turn up on a Template:GeoGroup list. It doesn't seem to currently.Oranjblud (talk) 16:51, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Bad effect on printable version of articles
This template has a very unfortunate effect on printable versions af articles, in that the long toolserver.org URL is fully expanded without a break, making infoboxes ridiculously wide, eg see Windsor castle printable (used via Gbmapping) - do a print (preview) for an even worse effect, the side text to the box is lost off the side of the page in upright A4. I don't know how to fix/improve this, but if someone knows howto that would be good. Thanks. Rwendland (talk) 11:13, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, so we need to consider how and  differ (incidentally, SU9701977005 is accurate to one metre, which is way too precise) in such respects as CSS styling. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:54, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
 * applies  which  doesn't. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:06, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
 * may be all that's required. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:10, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Please use protocol-relative URL for tools.wmflabs.org link
Please consider changing

to

in order to use a protocol-relative URL for the tools.wmflabs.org link. Thanks. --Elegie (talk) 21:22, 23 August 2015 (UTC) PAGE''' ]]) 20:03, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It should be possible to replace the whole of the http://tools.wmflabs.org/ or https://tools.wmflabs.org/ with toollabs:, and use double square brackets instead of single. That should aid in future-proofing. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:08, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That wouldn't work directly, since the URL has a query string (e.g. nl:Sjabloon:Oscoor?action=edit doesn't link to the edit page for the corresponding template on nlWP, but to a blacklisted page with the query string as part of the title). We could use something like  instead. SiBr4  (talk ) 10:48, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Testing in the template's sandbox seems to indicate that this works. Please consider changing
 * to
 * Thanks. --Elegie (talk) 06:59, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Ahecht ([[User_talk:Ahecht|'''TALK
 * Thanks. --Elegie (talk) 06:59, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Ahecht ([[User_talk:Ahecht|'''TALK