Dear all,
We are pleased to announce that PROJ 5.0.0 has been released!
This is the first major release of PROJ in over 25 years. The new release brings
many updates including a new API, much improvement geodetic capabilities and
a long list of bug fixes. The full release notes is included at the bottom of this mail.
The documentation has been given a significant overhaul for this new release.
Check it out on http://proj4.org/.
The source distributions can be download here:
http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-5.0.0.tar.gz
http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-5.0.0.zip
In addition to the new version of PROJ, updated datum grids packages has been
released. On top of the existing proj-datumgrids package we have added regional
packages with additional grids and init-files that are not essential to the
functionality of PROJ, but very useful for PROJ users in those specific regions.
More information on the datumgrid packages can be found at the GitHub repository:
https://github.com/OSGeo/proj-datumgrid
Download the packages here:
http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-datumgrid-1.7.tar.gz
http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-datumgrid-europe-1.0.tar.gz
http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-datumgrid-north-america-1.0.tar.gz
http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-datumgrid-oceania-1.0.tar.gz
Thanks to everyone who has contributed over the last year and a half to make this
release of PROJ happen.
The PROJ development team,
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————
5.0.0 Release Notes
This version of PROJ introduces some significant extensions and
improvements to (primarily) the geodetic functionality of the system.
The main driver for introducing the new features is the emergence of
dynamic reference frames, the increasing use of high accuracy GNSS,
and the related growing demand for accurate coordinate
transformations. While older versions of PROJ included some geodetic
functionality, the new framework lays the foundation for turning PROJ
into a generic geospatial coordinate transformation engine.
The core of the library is still the well established projection code.
The new functionality is primarily exposed in a new programming
interface and a new command line utility, “cct” (for “Coordinate
Conversion and Transformation”). The old programming interface is
still available and can - to some extent - use the new geodetic
transformation features.
The internal architecture has also seen many changes and much
improvement. So far, these improvements respect the existing
programming interface. But the process has revealed a need to simplify
and reduce the code base, in order to support sustained active
development.
!!!
!!! Therefore we have scheduled regular releases over the coming years
!!! which will gradually remove the old programming interface.
!!!
!!! This will cause breaking changes with the next two major version
!!! releases, which will affect all projects that depend on PROJ
!!! (cf. section “deprecations” below).
!!!
The decision to break the existing API has not been easy, but has
ultimately been deemed necessary to ensure the long term survival of
the project. Not only by improving the maintainability immensely, but
also by extending the potential user (and hence developer) community.
The end goal is to deliver a generic coordinate transformation
software package with a clean and concise code base appealing to
both users and developers.
VERSIONING AND NAMING
For the first time in more than 25 years the major version number of
the software is changed. The decision to do this is based on the many
new features and new API. While backwards compatibility remains -
except in a few rare corner cases - the addition of a new and improved
programming interface warrants a new major release.
The new major version number unfortunately leaves the project in a bit
of a conundrum regarding the name. For the majority of the life-time
of the product it has been known as PROJ.4, but since we have now
reached version 5 the name is no longer aligned with the version
number.
Hence we have decided to decouple the name from the version number and
from this version and onwards the product will simply be called PROJ.
In recognition of the history of the software we are keeping PROJ.4 as
the name of the organizing project. The same project team also
produces the datum-grid package.
In summary:
o The PROJ.4 project provides the product PROJ, which is now at
version 5.0.0.
o The foundational component of PROJ is the library libproj.
o Other PROJ components include the application proj, which provides
a command line interface to libproj.
o The PROJ.4 project also distributes the datum-grid package,
which at the time of writing is at version 1.6.0.
UPDATES
o Introduced new API in proj.h.
- The new API is orthogonal to the existing proj_api.h API and the
internally used projects.h API. - The new API adds the ability to transform spatiotemporal (4D)
coordinates. - Functions in the new API use the “proj_” namespace.
- Data types in the new API use the “PJ_” namespace, with a few
historic exceptions such as XY, XYZ, LP and LPZ.
o Introduced the concept of “transformation pipelines” that makes it
possible to do complex geodetic transformations of spatiotemporal
coordinates by daisy chaining simple coordinate operations.
o Introduced cct, the Coordinate Conversion and Transformation
application.
o Introduced gie, the Geospatial Integrity Investigation Environment.
- Selftest invoked by -C flag in proj has been removed
- Ported approx. 1300 built-in selftests to gie format
- Ported approx. 1000 tests from the gigs test framework
- Added approx. 200 new tests
o Adopted terminology from the OGC/ISO-19100 geospatial standards
series. Key definitions are:
- At the most generic level, a coordinate operation is a change
of coordinates, based on a one-to-one relationship, from one
coordinate reference system to another. - A transformation is a coordinate operation in which the two
coordinate reference systems are based on different datums, e.g.
a change from a global reference frame to a regional frame. - A conversion is a coordinate operation in which both
coordinate reference systems are based on the same datum,
e.g. change of units of coordinates. - A projection is a coordinate conversion from an ellipsoidal
coordinate system to a plane. Although projections are simply
conversions according to the standard, they are treated as
separate entities in PROJ as they make up the vast majority
of operations in the library.
o New operations:
- The pipeline operator (pipeline)
- Transformations:
- Helmert transform (helmert)
- Horner real and complex polynomial evaluation (horner)
- Horizontal gridshift (hgridshift)
- Vertical gridshift (vgridshift)
- Molodensky transform (molodensky)
- Kinematic gridshift with deformation model (deformation)
- Conversions:
- Unit conversion (unitconvert)
- Axis swap (axisswap)
- Projections:
- Central Conic projection (ccon)
o Significant documentation updates, including
- Overhaul of the structure of the documentation
- A better introduction to the use of PROJ
- A complete reference to the new proj.h API
- a complete rewrite of the section on geodesic calculations
- Figures for all projections
o New “free format” option for operation definitions, which
permits separating tokens by whitespace when specifying key/value-
pairs, e.g. “proj = merc lat_0 = 45”.
o Added metadata to init-files that can be read with the
proj_init_info() function in the new proj.h API.
o Added ITRF2000, ITRF2008 and ITRF2014 init-files with ITRF
transformation parameters, including plate motion model
parameters.
o Added ellipsoid parameters for GSK2011, PZ90 and “danish”. The
latter is similar to the already supported andrae ellipsoid,
but has a slightly different semimajor axis.
o Added Copenhagen prime meridian.
o Updated EPSG database to version 9.2.0.
o Geodesic library updated to version 1.49.2-c.
o Support for analytical partial derivatives has been removed.
o Improved performance in Winkel Tripel and Aitoff.
o Introduced pj_has_inverse() function to proj_api.h. Checks if an
operation has an inverse. Use this instead of checking whether
P->inv exists, since that can no longer be relied on.
o ABI version number updated to 13:0:0.
o Removed support for Windows CE.
o Removed the VB6 COM interface.
BUG FIXES
All bug fix numbers refer to issues indexed at
https://github.com/OSGeo/proj.4/issues/
o Fixed incorrect convergence calculation in Lambert Conformal
Conic. #16.
o Handle ellipsoid parameters correctly when using +nadgrids=@null.
#22.
o Return correct latitude when using negative northings in
Transverse Mercator (tmerc). #138.
o Return correct result at origin in inverse Mod. Stererographic
of Alaska. #161.
o Return correct result at origin in inverse Mod. Stererographic
of 48 U.S. #162.
o Return correct result at origin in inverse Mod. Stererographic
of 50 U.S. #163.
o Return correct result at origin in inverse Lee Oblated
Stereographic. #164.
o Return correct result at origin in inverse Miller Oblated
Stereographic. #164.
o Fixed scaling and wrap-around issues in Oblique Cylindrical
Equal Area. #166.
o Corrected a coefficient error in inverse Transverse Mercator. #174.
o Respect -r flag when calling proj with -V. #184.
o Remove multiplication by 2 at the equator error in Stereographic
projection. #194.
o Allow +alpha=0 and +gamma=0 when using Oblique Mercator. #195.
o Return correct result of inverse Oblique Mercator when alpha is
between 90 and 270. #331.
o Avoid segmentation fault when accessing point outside grid. #369.
o Avoid segmentation fault on NaN input in Robin inverse. #463.
o Very verbose use of proj (-V) on Windows is fixed. #484.
o Fixed memory leak in General Oblique Transformation. #497.
o Equations for meridian convergence and partial derivatives have
been corrected for non-conformal projections. #526.
o Fixed scaling of cartesian coordinates in pj_transform(). #726.
o Additional bug fixes courtesy of Google’s OSS-Fuzz program:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/oss-fuzz/issues/list?can=1&q=proj4
DEPRECATIONS
o The projects.h header and the functions related to it is
considered deprecated from version 5.0.0 and onwards.
!!! PROJECTS.H WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE LIBRARY !!!
!!! WITH VERSION 6.0.0 !!!
o The nmake build system on Windows will not be supported from
version 6.0.0 on onwards. Use CMake instead.
!!! NMAKE BUILD SYSTEM WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE LIBRARY !!!
!!! WITH VERSION 6.0.0 !!!
o The proj_api.h header and the functions related to it is
consided deprecated from version 5.0.0 and onwards.
!!! PROJ_API.H WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE LIBRARY !!!
!!! WITH VERSION 7.0.0 !!!
THANKS TO
Version 5.0.0 is made possible by the following contributors:
Lukasz Komsta
Maxim Churilin
edechaux
dusanjovic
Zoltan Siki
Tom Fili
Nicolas David
Mike Toews
Micah Cochran
Luke Campbell
Ilya Oshchepkov
Adam Wulkiewicz
Jonas Tittmann
Mateusz Loskot
Etienne Jacques
Bas Couwenberg
Elliott Sales de Andrade
Charles Karney
Aaron Puchert
Julien Moquet
Charles Karney
Howard Butler
Even Rouault
Thomas Knudsen
Kristian Evers