[josm-dev] Geometric calculations and projections

Anthony osm at inbox.org
Sun Dec 20 02:30:31 GMT 2009


On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com
> wrote:

> 2009/12/18 Anthony <osm at inbox.org>
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 7:32 PM, Matthias Julius <lists at julius-net.net
>> >wrote:
>>
>> > My point was that Wyoming *is* a rectangle in a Mercator projection.
>> >
>>
>> Well, it would have been if they had surveyed it correctly:
>>
>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=44.996&lon=-110.625&zoom=11&layers=B000FTF
>>
>
>
> maybe the paper they digitized was waved?
>

I assume that's a joke, but I was unclear so I'll elaborate in case anyone
didn't understand.  In the 1800s, when they were physically marking the
boundaries of Wyoming, they weren't perfectly accurate ("up to half a mile
off", as Matthias quotes from Wikipedia).  The actual legal boundary of
Wyoming is how it was physically marked.  "The legal boundary is the
surveyed boundary." (
http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc04/docs/pap1718.pdf)

I assume OSM has the (approximate) legal boundary.  I see the OSM state
boundary and OSM county boundary diverge a bit, though, and I'm not sure
which is more accurate (I assume the legal boundaries coincide).



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