The same problem can happen using the US conventions. 123,456,789 could be one number, or two (in 2 ways) or three. I suppose we don’t notice it much because the thousands separators can be omitted if necessary.
The first lesson I learned in computer-human interfaces was:
- Programming is simpler if the humans don’t type the commas in a number.
- The humans are going to type the commas no matter how much you tell them not to.
The standard decimal mark in Spanish, Italian or French is not a comma. It’s a high comma: an apostrophe. We call it a comma when reading the number out loud, but that’s as an abbreviation.
3’14159… (pi)
1.200 (one thousand, two hundred)
1[sub]M[/sub]000.000 (one million)
1.000[sub]M[/sub]000.000 (one thousand million)
We accept a comma as a decimal separator “because computers”, but the reason computers use a comma is that there was a misunderstanding.
When writing correctly, lists of numbers can be separated by commas or semicolons.
Someone else mentioned CSV files where the separator is a semicolon: I normally use the tab.
Not according to the Wikipedia article, which only lists Spain as using an upper comma (in handwriting, according to the article, but you’d know better whether it’s also used in Spain in typed documents). I know French-speaking Canada uses a (low) comma, and I’m quite sure France does as well, which is consistent with the article.
In Norway we use comma as the decimal separator, and write lists of numbers, including coordinate pairs, with a comma and a space to separate them, so (2.5, 3.4) becomes (2,5, 3,4).
Not ideal, but I’ve never come across pairs or groups of numbers with so little context it wasn’t fairly obvious how they were to be read.
Sorry I misled you, but it just shows how tricky this is. I intended one hundred twenty three thousand four hundred fifty six and seven hundred eighty nine thousandths and not a 2 dimensional vector. You can’t win.
Not traditionally. Like I said, things have a-changed due to computers. My French coworkers were surprised when I asked about it, and there was a chorus of “it’s high comma! It really should be high comma! How did you know it?” from those above 50. The Italians I didn’t need to ask, having seen enough hand-written numbers.
Yes, and I would also recommend comma and space for writing coordinates in US-locale style too. The examples in the OP like “123.4,567.8” look awful to me.
Yeah, it needs something, for sure. I think because of the locale-dependent decimal mark I’m going to go with the travian style of (xxx|yyy) coordinate display. Being an international game, I suspect that’s why they use that format in the first place.
I have it currently dimming the non-significant bits of the coordinates, as seen in the top left of the following screenshot.
That seems a good approach.
(Incidentally, I am also working on a standalone app for Star Control. Not a tool, just a playable demo for melee, because I have some ideas for melee I wanted to work out).
That’s interesting. But it still means that the traditional decimal separator in France, Spain and Italy used to be the upper comma, as other French-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries had different customs.
Eh… this is for presentation on a screen and not data if I understand.
I’ve been in GIS for 30 years.
If you can control the delimiter, then if in decimal degrees
X -106.042760 Y 39.618835
-or-
Long -106.042760 Lat 39.618835
Mostly, in my business, it’s hard to confuse so it would just be
-106.042760 39.618835
And a note to the OP - Ellis, what software are you using? ESRI?
I’m manually drawing everything on a picturebox with Circle(), Line(), and Print() commands.
For zooming in I simply resize the picturebox and then redraw, which means even on modern computers, zooming into 8x view is a little sluggish; roughly 8000x8000 on just a regular 1920x1080 display. However, once you zoom in, since the entire map is fully drawn, drag scrolling at 8x zoom is as smooth and fluid as it gets.
OK, I had to Google that. I’m VB. And stand on the shoulders of giants as we all do.
I think you need to know your audience. Do they understand Latitude and Longitude?
I’m not sure I understand the question. Are you asking if the people who play Star Control 2 understand how the map works in Star Control 2?
Uh… I’ve never seen Star Control 2 (never heard of it, had to wiki it). But your question specifically refers to map coordinates, and how to display them. On our spherical planet, X and Y coordinates are referred to Latitude and Longitude.
X is Longitude and Y is Latitude.
Or have I been whooshed?
Not intentionally, but yeah, I think you’ve been whooshed. My question specifically refers to map coordinates for a Star Control 2 map tool I’m writing.
Yes it’s for a star chart. And since it’s for a ship that can travel between star systems it should really be a 3d map.
…but they tried 3d star maps in star control 1, and they were very confusing and hard to use. So it’s an acceptable break from reality to just have all the stars arranged on a plane.
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So X, Y and Z perhaps for 3d. That’s what is used in the real world. I have know idea how that would work in a game or in real life in space for that matter, as you need a point of reference. I suspect I’m over thinking this.
I guess what is confusing is that the OP’s first post only spoke to two axis.
If you need a delimiter between values, for whatever this is, use a pipe. Very easy to bucket the different information quickly.