Why it's so fun to write geography software

[Hai-Etlik]

HUH???!!!

I was taught (and HAVE taught) that map coords were given as X being horizontal and Y being vertical (through the door and then up the stairs)......maybe the military really DOES do every thing bass ackwards...does make sense that the Aussies are all upside down though

I will bow to a certified GIS person however

It's the order that's the problem. In geography they are generally called "northing" and "easting" rather than x and y. If you have two numbers, they might be northing then easting, or they might be easting then northing. Or they might be easting, then "southing" if you are dealing with computer graphics. In that last case the origin is probably moved to the opposite side of the map too. A recent bug I had to fix involved an off by one error in converting between "y" being the distance up from the bottom and the distance down from the top.