[udig-devel] Praise for SRS Code in GeoTools/UDig

["Sunburned Surveyor" <sunburned.surveyor@xxxxxxxxx>]

I was checking out the options for reprojection of vector data in the
FOSS GIS world the first part of this week. (I wasn't just looking at
Java programs, but all FOSS GIS Programs.) I wanted to pat the
UDig/GeoTools folks on the back for their work with SRS reprojections.
I found that UDig was the easiest program to use for coordinate
transformations. It took me all of two minutes to load a Shapefile
with data in Lat/Long and to then reproject it to California State
Plane Zone 3 (NAD 1983). I was very impressed.

I was a little puzzled as to why GeoTools was using the EPSG database
for reprojection when I first looked at the Javadoc. However, after
some research online I realized that the EPSG really has the most
comprehensive collection of information about spatial reference
systems that is readily available. The decision made by the GeoTools
developers to use EPSG now makes a lot of sense.

I've downloaded a copy of the EPSG database and the EPSG documentation
that is available online. I hope to read through it this weekend. I
would really like to get a deeper understanding of the EPSG database
and how the GeoTools code interacts with it. If I can get this basic
understanding I would like to help maintain the GeoToools SRS code
that deals with EPSG if there was ever a need for this.

Good work guys. I'll know be using UDig for all my reprojection, at
least until I can get your code plugged into OpenJUMP! :]

The Sunburned Surveyor

I apologize for my somewhat hasty judgement of the GeoTools SRS code
that I made a few weeks ago.