Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:

>... The geographic descriptors 
>may be using OGC standards such as the Geographic Markup 
>Language (GML).  The location standard common in America 
>is WS84, but in Australia it is GDA94.  If a third standard 
>that includes both requirements chooses the American common 
>descriptors over the Australian, and chooses to use homebrew 
>descriptors for geographic elements over say, GML, then 
>at this point, a global vendor has no choice but to 
>gut the standard with variants.  One prefers to do this 
>using an acceptable version indicator or even by extension, 
>but it will be done regardless of the intent of the 
>committees.
>
I don't agree that the smaller countries (i.e. the US or Europe) should 
have to
yield to the larger country (i.e. Australia, including our Antarctic 
Territories.)
For a start, I can imagine that our standard unit of distance (the "hop") ,
area (the "square hop"), and longtitude and latitude (the "hopalong" and 
"hopalot")
would be unintuitive for people from the kangaroo-poor nations, however
reasonable they may seem to us.

With the customary marsupial blandishments,
Skippy