Subject: Re: info on iso-8211

From: dilg@ulabsgi (Doug Ilg)
Date: 14 Jan 1994 16:05:29 GMT

Jon Tischler ([email-masked]) wrote:

	<other included messages deleted>

: My question is: is any body using this?  And in particular are there any
: implementations out there (for both reading and writing).  

: I am especially interesed in what has been done in the way of allowing
: automatic display of data.  By this I mean that you tell your graphing
: program to read the data file, and it automatically puts up the graph that
: you had in mind when you took the data.  After all when you took the data,
: you knew what you wanted plotted, and what the axis labels should be, and
: other things like that.

: Jon Tischler     Solid State Division
: ORNLinternet     [email-masked]

I know of at least one group that is using ISO-8211.  There is a file format
called SDTS (Spatial Data Transfer Standard) developed by the US Geological
Survey and approved as a FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) by
NIST.  Sometime early this year, SDTS will become a mandatory standard for
all Federal agencies, where feasible.  (Now there's some government jargon
for you!! :-)

Anyway, part of the SDTS spec says something the the effect that ISO-8211
shall be used as a data encoding language for SDTS data.  I can't quote it
exactly, but it's something like that.

You can get info about SDTS on an anon FTP server at sdts.er.usgs.gov
You can contact the developers at [email-masked]

Hope this helps.

			-Doug Ilg
			 Hughes STX
			 Goddard Space Flight Center

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From: [email-masked] (Antony Cooper)
Date: 16 Jan 1994 20:26:22 +0200

>all Federal agencies, where feasible.  (Now there's some government jargon

SDTS becomes mandatory as from 15 February 1994, as far as I can recall. 

>exactly, but it's something like that.

Following the US lead, other countries have been looking at using ISO 8211
as the basic mechanism for their standards for the exchange of digital
geo-referenced information. Personally, I think that ISO 8211 adds an
unnecessary layer of extra complexity to such standards which are inherently
complex to start with, but then I am biased, as I have been involved in the
development of the South African standard, and we have no plans to use
ISO 8211 at this stage!  :-)

>You can contact the developers at [email-masked]

There is quite a bit of documentation and even software available from
this site, some of which deals with ISO 8211 specifically. As far as I
know, ISO 8211 is due to be reviewed round about now, as well.

Antony
--
Antony Cooper  --  Internet: [email-masked]       (25 45S  28 16E)
     CSIR Information Services, PO Box 395, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa
Voice: +27 12 8414121  $ Fax: +27 12 8413037  $ Page: (012) 3417607 code 32091

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From: [email-masked] (Markus Kuhn)
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 10:00:08 +0100

[email-masked] (Cristiano Verondini) writes:

>I'm searching any sort of documentation on the standard
>iso-8211.
>Does anyone know if there is any information available in internet?

No, because ISO standards are copyrighted and very expensive. But
you might want to have a look at ftp.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
in pub/doc/ISO/std-faq for general information about ISO standards and
how to get them.

Markus

-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science student «°o°» University of Erlangen, Germany
Internet: [email-masked]   |   X.500 entry available

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From: [email-masked] (Markus Kuhn)
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 10:00:08 +0100

Markus