Re: [Celestia-developers] Re: Small locations files
Real-time 3D visualization of space
Status: Beta
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cjlaurel
From: Chris L. <cl...@ww...> - 2003-12-08 11:38:22
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I was away in Whistler, British Columbia for a few days. What a lot of discussion this issue has provoked! On Sat, 6 Dec 2003, Grant Hutchison wrote: > > ... I think Chris might > > have already answered, in so many words <smile> > If he has, then it seems I haven't understood him. > > > mark each of the individual Australasia locations with "Australasia", > > and enter the local landmass in parens? Such as "Australasia > > (Australia)". > <pulls face> Not keen, to be honest. It's visually messy and it opens a new > can of worms, since I'd be labelling small landmasses (like New Zealand) > that don't attract a label elsewhere on the globe. I'm marking features by > their visual prominence elsewhere in the solar system, and would like to > stick to that with Earth, too. As much as I enjoyed New Zealand, I don't think that this is the right solution. > So may I propose something I now see I should have done originally? Let's > just step out of the box by ditching the Greek notion (born of limited > geographical knowledge) that Europe is a continent on equal footing with the > other land-masses. Then we can label five very large, geographically *very* > distinct land features called Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America > and Antarctica; we have a neat labelling cut-off at 10 million sq.km.; and > Australians will find it difficult to muster an effective dudgeon when > neither Europe nor Asia has been labelled, and the smallest labelled > landmass is almost twice as large as Australia. > Problem solved? I'm sure that there will still be some people unhappy with this solution, but whatever--it's just not that big a deal. I never knew there was any question about the continent status of Australia. My atlas has Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, etc. under the heading 'Australia & Oceania'. I often sea Europe and Asia considered together as Eurasia, which makes sense since there are no bodies of water splitting one from the other. Let's just go with your Eurasia/Africa/North America/South America/Antarctica proposal. If a lot of people complain about the omission about Australia, we can add it next time around--we'll let the deciding test for continenthood be a purely pragmatic one: fewest number of email complaints. --Chris |