The geonames.org server changed / geonames package

2009/1/23 Tomislav Hengl <T.Hengl at uva.nl>:

Just to let you know that geonames.org server changed from "ws.geonames.org" to "ws5.geonames.org"

See the info at: http://www.geonames.org/export/

Maybe you should add to your R package "geonames" an option to specify the server name manually,
e.g.:

setGNserver <- "ws5.geonames.org"

I think they've changed it back now, but I added the option to
change it using R's options() function:

 > GNtimezone(32,34)
   rawOffset dstOffset gmtOffset lng lat
 1         2         0         2  34  32
 > options(geonamesHost="ws5.geonames.org")
 > GNtimezone(32,34)
   rawOffset dstOffset gmtOffset lng lat
 1         2         0         2  34  32

to prove it did something:

options(geonamesHost="wtf.huh")
GNtimezone(32,34)

Error in url(url, open = "r") : cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In url(url, open = "r") :
  cannot open: HTTP status was '504 Gateway Time-out'

 It's changed in SVN on r-forge now, that should build a new package
version (0.8) and web page docs overnight.

Barry