Live data & geography

A few strict templates reach outside the Mac: weather in <place>, location of <place>, latitude/longitude of <place>, and distance between <end1> and <end2>. Each one is a strict pattern — if the line does not match exactly, nothing is sent anywhere.

This page documents the weather parser and its 600-second cache, the R85 geography templates (named places and explicit coordinates), the Haversine distance semantics, the DMS/decimal degree lane, and the privacy rules that apply to every request. Results driven by external data are marked as dynamic throughout.

Weather

The exact template is (case-insensitive):

weather in <place>

<place> is free text up to 100 characters. Safe punctuation is allowed so ambiguous names can be written naturally — New York, Paris, France, St. Louis, Côte d'Ivoire.

These make the line not a weather request (it continues down the normal pipeline):

• an empty place value,
• control characters,
• answer-token markers,
• #, =,
• operators: + - * / × ÷ − ^ % ( ).

The result is the current temperature in °C (C°) — a dynamic value.

• Provider: Open-Meteo, no key.
• Cache: last-good result per canonical request, 600-second TTL, then a background refresh.
• Offline: the last cached value; with no cache at all, Weather unavailable.
• Privacy: only the place name is sent.

Geography (R85)

The exact templates are (case-insensitive):

location of <place>
latitude of <place>
longitude of <place>
distance between <end1> and <end2>

The endpoints of distance between may each be either:

• a place name, resolved by the geocoder (dynamic), or
• explicit coordinates, which are resolved offline without any network request.

An unquoted name is split on the last standalone and in the line. Quotes are therefore supported — and recommended — for names that contain and:

distance between "Rock and Roll Hall" and Vienna

A single or unbalanced quote takes the line out of the geo grammar entirely.

Coordinate endpoints are written <latitude>, <longitude>. In a dot-decimal locale the separator is a comma; in a decimal-comma locale the pair uses a dot and is separated by a semicolon (;). Valid ranges: latitude −90…90, longitude −180…180.

Distance semantics

distance between computes a Haversine surface distance — the direct great-circle distance, not a driving or flight route.

• Earth radius: the mean WGS84 radius, 6,371,008.8 m.
• The result is clamped to the physical range [0, half the circumference].
• Distances of 1000 m and above display in kilometres.

Geocoding details:

• Provider: Open-Meteo, using only the geocoding endpoint; the top-ranked result is used, and no forecast or key is requested.
• Cache: locations.json with a 30-day TTL.
• Offline: the last cached resolution; otherwise Location unavailable.
• Privacy: only the place name is sent. The device’s GPS position is never used.

DMS / decimal degrees (R85)

The degree lane claims a line when any of the following holds:

• the line ends with as DMS or as decimal;
• it carries prime / double-prime components (DMS notation);
• a digit or sign sits immediately before ° (decimal degree form, including a trailing cardinal).

Temperature glyphs (C°, F°, K°, R°, always after a letter) are temperatures and are never intercepted by this lane.

Form	Example	Value
Decimal degree	51.5074°	51.5074
+ cardinal	51.5° N, 0.1275° W	sign by N/S/E/W (S, W negative)
DMS	156° 44′ 31.2″	156 + 44/60 + 31.2/3600
Partial DMS	156° 44′	degrees + minutes, no seconds
… as DMS	51.25° as DMS	→ 51° 15′ 0″
… as decimal	156° 44′ 31.2″ as decimal	→ 156.7419…

Limits and rules:

• Minutes and seconds are 0…59.
• Seconds accept up to two decimal digits in input (31.25″) and display with one (31.2″).
• The glyphs are only ° ′ ″ (U+00B0, U+2032, U+2033). ASCII ' and '' are not glyphs.
• Glyph order is fixed — the first is only °, the second only ′, the third only ″ — and there are 2–3 components.
• Digit chains without glyphs (156 44 31) do not become DMS: the lane does not claim such a line. (With an as decimal tail it is intercepted by the integer lane instead.) Left of as DMS / as decimal, a decimal number or a notation with at least one glyph is required.
• A cardinal is accepted only with a pure decimal degree (51.5° N); DMS notation with a cardinal (156°44′31″ W) is an error.
• Display: 156° 44′ 31.2″ (whole seconds without .0; in a decimal-comma locale 31,2″; negatives with a leading −).

Dynamic results

Weather, geocoded locations and the distances that depend on them are driven by external data and change over time. Everything else on this page — coordinate-based distances and DMS conversion — is computed locally.

Related

• Privacy & network — the complete network model.
• Units & quantities — quantities and conversions that stay on the Mac.