Hello Robert, as far as I understand it the OSM-databases store the location in long integers anyway. Thus there is no precision to be gained from using floats. You only loose storage-space, computation-time and native functionality on platforms that do not have native floating- points (like many cellphones, reflashed navigation-devices or all mobile J2ME java-platforms).
Marcus 2008/11/12, Robert (Jamie) Munro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Floats only allow more precision as the location being considered tends > towards 0,0 latitude and longitude. For the general case, using an > integer with the same number of bits of storage will always be more > precise, particularly at the extremes. > > As others have said, 32 bits gives errors of less than 10mm on the > equator, with even greater accuracy as you move away from it. This is > around 1000 times more accurate than the data in OSM can be reasonably > recorded at with standard GPS equipment. > > Robert (Jamie) Munro _______________________________________________ dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
