degrees and decimal mins to sexagesimal

[AntarcticPilot]

The first one only says that coordinate values (latitude, longitude, and altitude) should be delimited by spaces. It doesn't say that spaces are needed within these, and although I agree it can help legibility, the symbols do delimit. That's in print ... I completely agree that one has to be very careful about using anything !isalnum() when doing things digitally



That's a good idea. This is an odd case because, thanks to SI, we generally only have one unit for each quantity (10kN, 15mm, 8T - or possibly 10 kN, 15 mm, 8 T) rather than the mix the imperialist have to put up with: stones and pounds, feet and inches.

I'm going out on a limb a bit, but I think it DOES mean that space is the delimiter between D,M and S. It uses the same wording in the second point about decimal places being part of a value, so I think it is saying that D,M and S are separate values. Interpreting ISO standards is a bit of a minefield, sometimes - and, of course, people get things wrong! I know of an error in ISO 19112 (irrelevant to yachtspeople) where a diagram and a table are not in agreement (the table is correct, according to the chair of the committee that wrote it!). That one should have been fixed by now - the standards have a review cycle of 5 years, when they must be confirmed, revised or deleted.

Again, I'd point out that this is advisory, not part of the standard.

Note also that standards have to be interpreted in accordance with supporting standards; the ISO 19000 series have a few low numbered standards that are the ground rules for the rest of the set. They are the province of the real standards geeks! And for units and representation of numbers, BIPM rules, except in specialist cases like geographic notations. Perhaps it is noteworthy for IT people that UML (and very strict UML) is the way that the detail of standards is conveyed; the words are secondary!