This tool came up as a result of mess around GPS coordinate formatting and variety of popular formats and notations. Some use latitude and longitude degrees, some prefer degrees and minutes with fractional part. this does not take into account choices for datum and file formats.
For instance, both Google Maps and Yandex Maps accept latitude and longitude as ll= URL parameter with the value of latitude and longitude in degrees, however Google uses latitude coming first, while Yandex prefers the opposite.
Recently, a rally road book contained the following formatting of track points:
Having to put a stop to the madness, this utility comes up as a handy assistant to convert and format GPS coordinates into reasonable presentation and separators.
The utility runs on background and monitors clipboard, and once it recognizes one of the following:
- GPS Point in Degrees
- GPS Point in Degrees and Minutes
- GPS Point in Degrees, Minutes and Seconds
- Google Maps URL
- Yandex Maps URL
it flashes and updates its UI providing the choices of track point formatting:
The utility is trying hard to accept various separators and formats, just one thing is important to keep in mind: if you are using minutes without seconds, the fractional part of minutes should be separated by decimal point (.).
The utility also responds to hotkeys Ctrl+Shift+F1, Ctrl+Shift+F2 etc. and copies the formatted point location back into clipboard so that one could quickly re-format editable text in another application through clipboard updates. Alternatively, it is possible to click the formatted value and place it into clipboard.
The utility also provides clickable hyperlinks to open Google Maps and Yandex Maps into the point of interest.
A binary [Win32] and partial Visual C++ .NET 2010 partial source code are available from SVN.
Note: you might need to run the tool “As Administrator” elevating UAC privileges in Vista/7 operating systems.
Bonus links on the topic:
- GPS Coordinate Converter, Maps and Info
- ITN Converter – converts for route file formats