PanGazer - coordinate formats

Latitude and longitude coordinates can be displayed in many different formats, including pure degrees, degrees and minutes, and degrees with minutes and seconds. All of these may be signed (+ or −) or may have their direction indicated by North or South of the equator (for latitude) or East or West of the Greenwich meridian (for longitude).

PanGazer uses the 1984 World Geodetic System » (WGS84) coordinate system.

Displayed formats

You can select the format that PanGazer uses for displaying coordinates using the Settings → Coordinate formats menu items, which lets you choose between:

Degrees°minutes′seconds″ e.g., N52°08′18.9″ W1°44′47.0″
Degrees°minutes e.g., N52°08.314 W1°44.784
Degrees (5 fractional digits) e.g., 52.13857 −1.74640
Degrees (6 fractional digits) e.g., 52.138572 −1.746397
UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) e.g., 30U 585792 5777191

Input formats

PanGazer accepts all the ‘Degrees’ formats above (except the UTM format) when parsing entered coordinates in the Image → Image geography dialog (see the Image Geography page for details of that dialog).

It also accepts a number of variations, including:

The separator between latitude and longitude may include, or be only, a comma, and may have multiple spaces.
The directional sign (N, E, S, W, +, −) may be in lowercase if a letter and may follow rather than precede the rest of a coordinate.
The degrees, minutes, or seconds indicator may be a colon (‘:’) instead of °, ′, or ″.
The degrees indicator may also be a lowercase O (‘o’) or one of various other codes from different codepages (e.g., the Windows command prompt codepage).
Multiple leading zeros are accepted on any number.

A more formal description of what is accepted is below. Here are some examples:

  43.754,-3.200
  12:15:59.05s   003:12.768w
  S17o12:00.57  W91:15:12:

Input formats definition

A position is described by a text string that contains two coordinates: a latitude and a longitude (in that order) in a variety of formats.

The overall format is (square brackets indicate optional parts):

[whitespace] latitude separation longitude [whitespace]

where whitespace is zero or more tabs and spaces in any combination and separation is whitespace then an optional comma followed by more whitespace, and must have at least one tab, space, or comma.

latitude and longitude are of the form:

[sign] amount [sign]

where sign for latitude is one of ‘Nn+’ for a latitude north of or including the equator and is one of ‘Ss−’ for a latitude south of or including the equator; similarly, the sign for longitude is one of ‘Ee+’ for a longitude east of or including the Greenwich meridian and is one of ‘Ww−’ for a a longitude west of or including the Greenwich meridian. In both cases, only one sign (before or after the amount) is allowed, and the default sign is ‘+’.

amount is of the form:

number [degchar [number [minchar [number [secchar]]]]]

where each number is an unsigned decimal number which must start with a digit. Only the final number included in the coordinate may include an embedded decimal point and following decimal digits (fractional part). The three numbers are valued as degrees, minutes, and seconds respectively.

The first number must be in the range 0 through 90 (for latitude) or 0 through 180 (for longitude). The other two numbers may be 0 up to (but not including) 60. Extra leading zeros are permitted for all numbers.

The accepted separator characters are:

  degchar: ':', 'o', or degree symbols ('\xb0', '\xba', '\xf8')
  minchar: ':' or single quote
  secchar: ':' or double quote

For example, the following strings are accepted:

  43.754 -3.200
  N12:15:59.05 W003:12.768
  N120o35'05.15  W091:44.768:
  48S,-56.999

Note that latitude and longitude are not required to use the same notations.