Master Places Latitiude /Longitude

[zanemc 0]

Hi

I'm wanting to setup Latitude /Longitude Places in TMG so that I can create maps in Second Site , but I'm having probles in TMG.

 

I'v3 located a cemetry on Google maps at Peak Hill NSW Australia and the Latitude /Longitude reads :

 

Latitude: -32.693159

Longitude: 148.189028

 

I input this into the Master Place field place field L9 which reads Coordinates - as

 

032693159S014889028W

 

However when I click on the icon for "Get a map of this place " and select "Google maps by Lat/Long "

it finds a place in ocean off Somalia in East Africa and obviously not Australia

 

Google maps search line shows : 3.4592 59.0300

 

However when I select "Google maps by place name " the Google maps search line shows : Peak Hill Cemetery NSW Australia and finds places in the USA but when I change the Google maps search line to : Peak Hill Cemetery Peak Hill NSW .............then presto it locates the correct location in Australia , but why doesn't Peak Hill appear in the search line ??

 

 

Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong would be appreciated ?

 

Thanks

Zane McCarron

[wghayes 0]

Zane -

 

I have not yet converted to v7 from v6, but I suspect the versions are the same vis-a-vis latitude and longitude. You must enter the number as degrees, minutes and seconds. In the USA 37 degrees 24 minutes and 30 seconds longitude and -80 d 15 m 20 s latitude would be entered thusly: 372430N0801520W

 

For easily doing the conversion from decimals go to http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/DDDMMSS-decimal.html

 

Maybe I will find a tool in v7 that makes the conversion. If not, let's suggest it.

 

Hope this keeps you on dry land -

 

Bill Hayes

[Jim Byram 0]

If you enter the coordinates in TMG as:

-32.693159,148.189028

 

When they are saved, they will be converted to:

324135S1481120E

 

And that works correctly with Google maps lat/long as far as I can see.

 

If you use SS, the coordinates should be entered in TMG v7.03 as:

-32.693159~148.189028

and tell TMG to accept the entry as entered.

 

That will not work with Google maps lat/long from TMG but will work with SS mapping.

 

Trade-off.

[John Cardinal 0]

Zane,

 

You can enter LatLong coordinates in TMG's preferred format and SS will handle them just fine.

 

The problem with TMG coordinates is that they are not accurate enough. As Jim described, when you enter "-32.693159,148.189028" in TMG, TMG converts the value to "324135S1481120E". The problem is, those two locations are different. A more accurate conversion to degrees-minutes-seconds would be 32 41 35.4S, 148 11 20.5E. (TMG's internal format does not support fractional seconds in LatLong values.) It's a relatively small difference, but when trying to locate a hard-to-see grave marker, the difference could be crucial.

 

Note that if you convert "324135S1481120E" back to decimal degrees format you get "-32.693066,148.188889" not "-32.693159,148.189028".

 

To allow for more precise locations in Second Site maps, SS also recognizes a special form of the decimal degrees notation that you can use in place of the TMG degrees-minutes-seconds format. When you enter the LatLong as "-32.693159~148.189028", TMG will not convert the value to it's internal format. The advantage is that you can record more precise locations. The disadvantage is that some of TMG's features related to LatLongs will not work properly.

 

I have asked Wholly Genes to increase the precision of the LatLong values in a future release of TMG.