In dark age of Arc Info 4, ESRI said they would have this solved in "next" version. Waiting... there are partial solutions depending on projections that can take your geometry (often has to be 0:360) and transform into a continuous xy coordinates. Working with actual -180:180 coordinates and recognizing that a line going from 179.99 to -179.34 probably doesnt want to be drawn right around the planet is still not happening. Our homemade software was doing this on a PDP-11 in 1981 so I dont think there is a fundamental problem.
So what do we want? Be able to store geometry in -180:180 including for lines/polygons crossing the the 180. Be able to draw this on 3D globe or in projection of choice (including global projections like mercator) and be able to do spatial calculations and visualizations without worrying about the 180 line.
Nice to know that but really this should work with any projection of users choice. If your map is bringing in tile sets as well then you want to work with the raster projection.
