Jonathan Fay wrote:
> While KML is a common denominator, unfortunately astronomy has not
> been at the table at all for its definition so far. It needs to be
> a priority to move KML to use astronomy friendly standards.
>
> Certainly it needs to move away from equirectangualar projections
> for full sky and overlays to more astronomy friendly projections.
>
> Also astronomy coordinates systems and meta data need to be
> supported so that KML can be used to support rich astronomy use,
> rather than just HTML or text.
>
> I think this will take the VO community, Microsoft Research and the
> Google Sky folks to push this together, otherwise the critical mass
> will come from the Earth based GIS folks and astronomy will
> continue to be short-changed.
Agreed. But KML is now deeply entrenched in the GIS community despite the awful geo-rectification problems (handy when you're wife is a geographer). I think we have to work within the existing framework, large scale changes to KML as is aren't going to happen. Extensions, sure, changes, no.
Al. Received on 2008-01-22Z14:48:04