GSAK and Ireland counties

[+Bear and Ragged]

lignumaqua has posted in the GSAK forums, but I doubt many from here read over there, unless they have GSAK problems.

 

So, I've posted the question here.

(Yes, I'm aware it refers to Ireland!)

 

This is a question specifically for UK users of GSAK.

 

There's a problem with counties in the UK which we've known about for some time but we're not sure how to deal with it as it stems from a GC issue. wacko.gif

 

AFAIK There are 72 UK counties, including 6 in Northern Ireland. However currently GSAK recognizes only the mainland ones and we are missing:

 

County Antrim

County Armagh

County Down

County Fermanagh

County Londonderry

County Tyrone

 

Instead these show up in the Ireland polygons lumped together as a single 'county' called Northern Ireland. This all happens because GC.com classifies the 6 in the Ulster region of Ireland rather than in the UK.

 

The upshot is that GSAK doesn't have individual polygons for them in either country. sad.gif

 

Firstly - have I got this correct? If so, then what should GSAK do? Do you think we should have individual county polygons for these in Ireland to replace the current single 'Northern Ireland' county polygon? Or something else? Or leave it as it is? I'm sure the UK cachers have already discussed this and come to some conclusion.

 

(Note: As politically correct/incorrect as it may be there is no option to move them from Ireland to the UK as caches from this area have 'Ireland' in the country field in GPX files from GC.com)

 

Linky

 

It will be of use to those of us on this side of the water, if you use FindStatGen for stats and go and find Europe's First cache, and others in Ireland while over there!

 

PLEASE. Post replies on the GSAK forum!

Edited July 13, 2010 by Bear and Ragged

[+Guanajuato]

That's excellent - I'd had a bit of correspondence with Dino-irl t'other day about that subject. Whilst my response was sort of right, Lignumaqua's knowledge is far above mine. Good to see a solution in progress.

 

Can I just politely request that if you've got a bee in your bonnet about what county names should be, PLEASE don't bother hijacking the thread. It's been done to death!

Counties have been changing forever - no county is the 'correct' one for any location. Some people get really het up when discussin Kendal being in Cumbria rather than Westmorland, conveniently forgetting that at some point in the past, westmorland was a new entity. Kendal was within Strathclyde before that! There are parts of Warwickshire that have, historically been part of Worcestershire, the disappearance and reappearance of Rutland, Is York is Yorkshire? Is Manchester part of Lancashire or Greater Manchester? - the list is endless. To quote the great Crocodile Dundee its like two fleas arguing over who owns the dog.

[+CluelessTwo]

A big part of the problem lies in how the caches are categorised in GSAK.

 

The caches in Northern Ireland are listed in various locations, which is the cache owners preference when submitting the listing.

 

When looking at my own found database:

In the "country" section we have either "Ireland" or "United kingdom"

In the "State" section we have "Nil", "Ulster", "Munster", "Leinster", "Connacht" and "Dublin"

In the "County" section we have the majority of them listed as "Northern Ireland" there are a scattering of caches which have the actual county name eg "Antrim", "Down".

The caches in the ROI all have their individual counties listed. There are also some with the "County" section blank

 

The result is a lot of white on my map where I have found numerous caches.

 

Look forward to getting this running correctly.

Edited July 16, 2010 by CluelessTwo