joshuanunn / convertbng.jl Goto Github PK

Congratulations on an accurate and pure-Julia package!

In case you are thinking about registering the package, I hope you don't mind if I make an enquiry of you.

I wrote BritishNationalGrid.jl some time ago as I had a need to convert lots of BNG points (some with the square two-letter references) to WGS84, but didn't need great absolute accuracy. I was then persuaded to register the package. ('BNG.jl' wasn't at the time considered an acceptable name since the acronym may have multiple meanings and globally recognition of it is weak.) However, I'm not an expert in this and my package simply relied on Proj4 to do a job to about 1 m. You clearly are much more knowledgable about coordinate transformations with the BNG, have a need to perform lots of them quickly, and I suspect you are therefore much better placed to continue development of a package to do just that.

I think it would be a shame if the community couldn't indicate that one single package is the optimal way to convert between WGS84 and BNG coordinates, so I thought it might be helpful to make a suggestion.

There is currently no way (nor should there be) to remove BritishNationalGrid.jl from the General registry, and it will therefore be there for the foreseeable future. With that knowledge, I wonder if you would either like to contribute your code to BritishNationalGrid.jl, or perhaps take ownership of the package entirely? (Or I could add it to the JuliaGeo organisation, to which you could be added?) It simply seems like a good opportunity to retire the existing sub-optimal code.

Of course, you may have no interest in doing this—you might have no plans to register the package, or for lots of other good reasons want complete control of all aspects, all of which are completely understandable. But I thought I would ask, just in case.

Thanks again for this very welcome addition to the Julia ecosystem!

(Or—I wonder if really it should all go in Geodesy.jl?)