39°65'N should change to 40°5'N

Discussion of things we want in Geocart
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nvkelso
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2010 12:16 am

39°65'N should change to 40°5'N

Post by nvkelso »

Right now it errors only when entering that in the Boundaries dialog.
daan
Site Admin
Posts: 977
Joined: Sat Mar 28, 2009 11:17 pm

Re: 39°65'N should change to 40°5'N

Post by daan »

Consider, for example, a microwave oven. If you enter 65 seconds as a cooking time, that seems reasonable to me. It’s a span of time measured in seconds. But what if you enter 2 minutes 65 seconds? Should the oven interpret that as 3 minutes 5 seconds? It seems to me there’s a good chance that it was actually an entry error. What good comes from legitimizing an error?

How does a legitimate entry like 39°65′ arise? Maybe the only natural source is the result of adding a latitudinal extent to a latitude. If that is so, then perhaps the right solution is to allow entry of arithmetic expressions. I’m not saying that’s going to happen right away, but… that may be the “correct” solution.
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