I have implemented a GetContinentDefinitions() in our development environment. It's neither tested or released yet, but likely to be tomorrow.

Here is the Doxygen documentation, which hopefully says what it does:
/// @brief Get continent definitions
///
/// Returns an associative array with continents and their belonging countries.
/// If the optional parameter continent is used, a list of countries are returned only.
/// @param[in] string continent - Optional, if given, a list of countries for the given continent is returned

By using these, checkers based on continents will follow Project-GC's updates on the topic (in regard to name changes of countries and such).

How do you handle the issue with islands close to continents, eg. Canary Islands which is geographically close to Africa yet belongs to Spain which falls under Europe?

By the way, the list will also be available in the FAQ as soon as the next update is released.

Since Canary Islands isn't a country (per definitions from HQ), it's not part of the continent definitions. Spain itself is well known to belong to Europe.

We have ignored the fact that some countries have islands far far away that might be on (close to) other continents. I don't think we have gotten much feedback on it actually.

The only alternative solution that would be better in this regard in my opinion, would be to assign a continent to each Geocache. That isn't something we are planning though.

But good question, I honestly can't remember that I have ever even thought about it before (which should say how little feedback we have gotten on the matter).

Yes, I get that they're not countries. There's been lots of confusion regarding the islands before when it comes to allocation to continents. Some CO's wants Canary Islands to count under Africa, other think it's crazy and it should count under Europe, or some simply don't care, and then we also get users who query or dispute those decisions. So if the islands are ever allocated to continents, there might need to be political ownership as well as geographical ownership.

What about Melilla and Ceuta the belong to Spain but are on the African continent in fact even the Spanish call it in Africa

Second question : which assignment are you using because of the Eurazian countries because there is no clear definition apart from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/List_of_countries_by_continent

I noticed that Scandinavian countries see Greenland as Europe but others see it as North America

vogelbird Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What about Melilla and Ceuta the belong to Spain
> but are on the African continent in fact even the
> Spanish call it in Africa
>
> Second question : which assignment are you using
> because of the Eurazian countries because there is
> no clear definition apart from
> http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/List_of_countries_by_continent
>
> I noticed that Scandinavian countries see
> Greenland as Europe but others see it as North
> America


Melilla and Ceuta sadly has the exact same issue as Canary Islands. I have no good and reasonable solution for this.

I did however get a decent idea for Profile stats. I have implemented so that it can trigger an African map if the three mentioned regions in Spain are logged ('Islas Canarias', 'Melilla', 'Ceuta'). The regions will be listed as Spain/<Region> below the Africa-map, and will use the Spanish flag. The areas on the map won't turn green though. I didn't care to fix the technical part since the areas are so small that they won't be seen anyway.


Regarding Eurazian. As can be seen on the screenshot I made, some countries belong to both Europe and Asia. There is no regard to what region of the country, or which Geocache. Any geocache in Egypt, Russia or Turkey will grant both Europe and Asia in Profile stats.

It's similar in the definitions that can be fetched with mentioned API method. Those three countries are listed for both continents. This can easily be adjusted in a checker script that wants to do it differently.

vogelbird Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I noticed that Scandinavian countries see
> Greenland as Europe but others see it as North
> America


Greenland is defined as Europe in our data-set. I haven't heard any complaints about it, and as long as Trump don't manage to buy it, I have a hard time seeing it as North America. Though I don't know how the continental platters actually look.

pieterix Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, I get that they're not countries. There's
> been lots of confusion regarding the islands
> before when it comes to allocation to continents.
> Some CO's wants Canary Islands to count under
> Africa, other think it's crazy and it should count
> under Europe, or some simply don't care, and then
> we also get users who query or dispute those
> decisions. So if the islands are ever allocated to
> continents, there might need to be political
> ownership as well as geographical ownership.

If Canary Islands was its own country, I would without a doubt match it with Africa.

That it's just Europe (Spain) now, is something we can call a technical limitation. I don't see any reasonable workaround to the problem. The only easy way to solve it for us today, would be to put Spain in both Europe and Africa, and I hope we can agree that will be worse.

@vogelbird

I will have to get back to you. Your competence regarding countries is way too high, I don't know what half of them are. Let me finish what I am doing, and I will take a serious look.

Meanwhile, here is a screenshot of the definitions Project-GC uses (mainly for Profile stats).
https://1447.se/shutter/screenshot_20200114_11%3A34%3A19_3535.png

EDIT: Continents are also coming to the filter system (top lists and such), so it will be used in more places.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2020 11:36AM by magma1447. (view changes)

You are missing a continent
["Antarctica"] = {
"Antarctica",
"Bouvet Island",
"French Southern and Antarctic Territories",
"Heard Island and McDonald Islands",
"South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands"
}

vogelbird Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You are missing a continent
> ["Antarctica"] = {
> "Antarctica",
> "Bouvet Island",
> "French Southern and Antarctic Territories",
> "Heard Island and McDonald Islands",
> "South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands"
> }

I have added this as well now, with your exact country list. Thank you.