Calculated Coordinates: coordinates are not parsed as expected by Geocachers

Current Coordinate parser is pretty simple: it parses coordinates from left to right, each formula it finds is considered to result in degree / minute / second decimal value depending on position and follow-up charater (°, ’ or ").

This results in some behavior unexpected to geocachers. This is especially true for the NDD MM.MMM format. For example:

• N50°00.A+B+C' with A=2, B=3, C = 5 results in N50° 8.2' (where 8.2 = 00.2 + 3 + 5) instead of N50° 00.010' (which would be expected by geocachers).
• Something like N214° parses correctly even though the degree value is totally out of range

On dev meeting on 9.1.22 we discussed the following measurements:

1) Parse parts before and after decimal point as separate formulas

Evaluate both parts to integers (round up if is is a float value, throw an error if this is not possible) then concatenate them

Doing this N50°00.A+B+C' with A=2, B=3, C = 5 will then result in N50°00.10'

2) add leading zeros to minute decimal part

If a coordinate part is identified to be a minute value and the part after decimal point is less than 3 digits long then it is filled up with leading 0 filled up

Doing this (combined with the first measurement) N50°00.A+B+C' with A=2, B=3, C = 5 will then result in N50°00.010' (note the leading 0 before 10)

3) Evaluate coordinate for correct value ranges.

For example latitude shall not be outside +/-90 degree.

This issue is used to track implementation of the above. There were other measurements discussed at the dev meeting. For discussion of those I open another issue #12512

[ztNFny]

What I meant to say: DMM -> the decimal minutes MUST be padded, everything else optional DMS -> everything optional (as 50° 1’ 1" == 50° 01’ 01") DD -> nothing should be padded as 50.1 and 50.01 are different but there’s no to know the expected precision

[eddiemuc]

It was not quite clear to me in the end whether this should also happen for degrees - and if yes whether to do it to 5 or 6 decimal places. I would rather NOT do leading zeros for degress (just for minutes and seconds)

Imho we MUST pad those places where it makes a difference (decimal minutes in DMM format), all other places are optional but should be consistent to avoid confusion.

Consider the simple example N48.X° assuming X=6. Should this now be

• N48.6° (no leading zeros)
• N48.00006° (leading zeros, 5 digits)
• N48.000006° (leading zeros, 6 digits)

In my impression there was no clear solution which case to use in the linked discussion above. The pros and cons are pretty clear (first one is inconsistent to leading-zero-handling with minutes and seconds), but in contrast to minutes/seconds it is hard to define for degrees to how many digits one should trail with zeros (5 or 6 or something else?).

I personally would thus use solution 1 (no trailing zeros for degree) although it is not consistent with handling of minutes/seconds. In contrast to minutes/seconds I don’t feel there’s a “common agreement” among geocachers on how many after-digits a degree should have.