Ontario Counties

[+frinklabs]

I downloaded a macro awhile ago by ky.m.guy called Ontario_County_Tagger that seemed to work very well. I realized that it might not be as granular as it could be when it put GC1V93X in the wrong area.

 

So I went to update it -- and now it isn't present in the GSAK macro library any more.

 

Is this because of its inaccuracy? Is there another way to automatically set the Ontario counties in GSAK?

[+Dr. House]

There are a few different ones that will do the job, but the one I use now is CountyStateUpdate by The CEO.

[+frinklabs]

Thanks - exactly for what I was looking!

 

The bad news is that the new macro is possibly using the same coarse data as the original that I was using -- it also put GC1V93X in Durham instead of Northumberland.

 

To be fair, the cache is within meters of the border:

 

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=44.07495&mlon=-78.505717&zoom=17

 

The good news is that it might be fixable since the macro is still listed on the GSAK library.

 

I will follow up accordingly.

[+Dr. House]

As I understand it, the files that determine county lines were provided to Clyde for use within GSAK by ky.m.guy, the same cacher who'd created the macro you were initially using. Stands to reason that there might still be some errors here and there similar to what you're describing.

 

I really enjoy the county information, and would appreciate it more if it were updated to be spot on, but I don't know anything about creating that information to help him out for what is probably a fairly involved process, so I'm very thankful for all his work in getting us to where we are now.

[+ky.m.guy]

The data near the borders will not be 100% accurate because of the unavailability of 100% accurate data.

 

The cache that you mention is 10m from the border of the two counties. In cases where the caches are near the borders, you should double-check the assigned county manually.

 

If anybody knows a source of more accurate data, please let me know!

[+ky.m.guy]

Oh...and the process for fixing a county is quite involved. Every change to one border affects at least two counties, I have to email the new files to Clyde and I've got no idea how difficult it is for him to actually put the update into effect.

 

I can't see the necessity of doing this for a single cache that is missed by 10m so I won't be fixing this at this time...sorry

[+frinklabs]

I see now that the county information is somehow integrated into GSAK directly. There is a programming call to retrieve that data directly which lets the new macro by "CEO" contain three lines. Your macro contained the polygon data within and was just over 11,000 lines.

 

I was using OSM to check which county the cache was in, and I changed it manually in GSAK.

 

Then I started second guessing my second-guessing... What if your data is good, and OSM is off...?

 

I am going to contact a surveyor friend of mine and find out if the polygon information is available somewhere official.

 

[+northernpenguin]

 

I am going to contact a surveyor friend of mine and find out if the polygon information is available somewhere official.

 

 

I would suggest Land Information Ontario. That's where I start when looking for things like that.