In my previous post I showed how to get NMEA data from my TomTom GPS. You will also notice that the latitude and longitude data was presented thus:


  W 5224.771484
  N 404.355896

The sharp eyed reader will realise that actually, latitudes are a number of degrees north or south of the equator, whereas longitudes are a number of degrees east or west of the prime meridian (in Greenwich… did I mention I recently got lost on my way home from Greenwich?)

Even sharper eyed readers will realise that Aberystwyth is roughly 4 degrees to the west of Greenwich and roughly 52 degrees north of the equator. So what is happening here?

I think it is a Mac stumbler bug. I haven’t checked, but essentially I just ignored the letters “N” and “W” when converting my data in my XSL stylesheets in the previous post. If you are east of Greenwich or south of the equator, you will have to fix the stylesheets by hand!