Motivation
I would like to be able to convert to and from the Maidenhead location system.
The coordinates system is widely in use in the amateur radio community, and has been for ages.
Suggestion
The algorithm behind Maidenhead is simple, comparable to Google's "plus codes" (aka Open Location Code) already supported by Geoshare. It's similar in that it works offline and has a flexible, grid-based precision system.
The implementation is simple. If you're familiar with Perl, a liberally licensed ("same license as perl", which presumably means GPL or Artistic) implementation is visible here:
https://metacpan.org/release/MEH/Ham-Locator-0.1000/source/lib/Ham/Locator.pm
It's less than 300 lines, and is a simple lookup table, essentially.
Maidenhead codes are widely in use in the Ham community, and I don't see them going away any time soon. It would be really great to have Geoshare support them!
Anything else?
I should be transparent and say that I first looked for that feature in my mapping software, Comaps, but they seem to have refused the feature, presumably because it's too niche, something I dispute.
Motivation
I would like to be able to convert to and from the Maidenhead location system.
The coordinates system is widely in use in the amateur radio community, and has been for ages.
Suggestion
The algorithm behind Maidenhead is simple, comparable to Google's "plus codes" (aka Open Location Code) already supported by Geoshare. It's similar in that it works offline and has a flexible, grid-based precision system.
The implementation is simple. If you're familiar with Perl, a liberally licensed ("same license as perl", which presumably means GPL or Artistic) implementation is visible here:
https://metacpan.org/release/MEH/Ham-Locator-0.1000/source/lib/Ham/Locator.pm
It's less than 300 lines, and is a simple lookup table, essentially.
Maidenhead codes are widely in use in the Ham community, and I don't see them going away any time soon. It would be really great to have Geoshare support them!
Anything else?
I should be transparent and say that I first looked for that feature in my mapping software, Comaps, but they seem to have refused the feature, presumably because it's too niche, something I dispute.