[OSM-dev] about mercator projection

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On 8/18/07, "Martín RV (OPENGeoMap)" <martin at opengeomap.org> wrote:
>
>  Hi:
>
>  I am an land surveyor and programmer in Spain.
>  I would like to talk about the projection used in JOSM and in
> OpenStreetMap. I was studying the projection in Google Earth and World Wind,
> and i think that they have a good choice.

Umm, OpenStreetMap uses no projection at all, just lon/lat. JOSM has
the choice between Mercator and some other one that looks wierd :)

I think you're talking about tiles at home/Mapnik. Yes, they use Mercator
because that's what looks good on screen (Google Maps uses it for the
same reason). Yes, if you have 3D hardware driving an interactive
screen, then plate carrée would be good, but we don't, so we do
mercator.

As pointed out, you are free are free to build your own server using a
different projection, but for the OSM project itself it's not useful
at this stage.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at gmail.com> http://svana.org/kleptog/