May I ask what you want to use this for? I think that'll play a big role in determining the "best" representation for your purposes. Based on your point 9, you might want to look into Geographic information systems. For example, QGIS is an open-source GIS software, I played around with it a while back. It has fairly tight bindings with Python, but I think it should be possible to bind Perl into it as well. There are probably modules in the Geo:: namespace that could help.

In reply to Re: Earth as a sphere by haukex
in thread Earth as a sphere by betmatt

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