What does it mean to process points on a spherical manifold?

[asinghvi17]

The problem is that points can be lat/long, unit spherical, or 3D Cartesian. There are multiple ways to represent points on a sphere. How do you know which one is given to you, and how can you dispatch on that somehow to get the correct behavior?

[asinghvi17]

Specifically you can imagine a situation where:

• GeoJSON points are meant to be interpreted as being on the sphere/ellipsoid but are really lat/long
• But you can have a GI wrapper polygon of UnitSphericalPoint
• How do you create a function that is generically determining area?

[asinghvi17]

Ok it looks like the answer is to call UnitSphericalPoint(...) and add a preparation on points that caches the unit spherical representation too.