-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Don't forget that surveyors actually say (x, y) but mean x as pointing north and y to the West or East of a meridian and that image processors say x and y but in their case y starts in the top left corner and points 'downwards'.
Therefore whoever you ask will say that they are "right" because obviously they have been the first ones to discover coordinates - for their specific problem. Latitude comes before Longitude in nautics because the latitude is easier to determine and especially in the old days and until we had precise clocks tended to be a lot more reliable. There is a write-up trying to bring some light into the issue here: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Axis_Order_Confusion Feel free to improve, it's a Wiki. Have fun, Arnulf On 12.10.2014 19:26, Brian Russo wrote: > Just guessing, but it's probably just a result of historical convention. > > It's much easier to determine latitude so probably that's why it was the > first number. When means of determining longitude came about much later > it was simply tacked on. The lunar distance method and of course the > chronometer didn't show up until about 2000 years after Eratosthenes > first proposed lat/lon. > > — > Sent from Mailbox <https://www.dropbox.com/mailbox> > > > On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 6:17 AM, Jaak Laineste (Nutiteq) > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Hello geowankers, > > > As old as the question to be or not to be, is whether ordinate order > (latitude,longitude) is better than (longitude,latitude). Everyone > has funny stories how they were mixed up in your code, how drones > went to bomb wrong enemies etc. I get once and a while questions > from geonovices “which comes first”. > > In the world domination of certain advertising company (latitude, > longitude) seems to be preferred, also OSM URL uses same order. I am > thinking of them as x and y, and in my 4th grade math I remember > that x goes always to “right”, i.e. east, and y goes to “up”, which > is north on canonical maps. So I prefer x,y and in other words less > common longitude,latitude. Order of y,x (latitude,longitude) seems > therefore unnatural for me. In various APIs you can find either > order, if you are lucky you have explicit naming, but in many cases > you see just a pair of doubles or floats. > > So, why is latitude, longitude more common - is it just bad luck, or > is there some logic or convention behind it? > > Jaak > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org > - -- Exploring Space, Time and Mind http://arnulf.us -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlQ6y/4ACgkQXmFKW+BJ1b1mxwCfThiAWoxeQsn2h88oV7S+zQwY k2YAnR7LV4RxdZVIVwYfzFai0dz/IoTZ =qQMa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
