Peter, thanks for reminding me of the link. It's useful to get a picture of
what's going on here.

To add my few words on the subject matter to respond to Peter Oliver's
original question.... Since I came up with the "old" way I guess I should
expand on my original thinking. When considering all types of ways I wanted
as much as possible to simplify the root key/value pairs so that you only
needed to refer to a few. My intention therefore was that any highway
traversed by foot would a highway=footway. Simples as my little meerkat
friends say. Now of course there are many types of footway, some paved, some
not, some with access rights (permissive or public) and some which nobody
seems to know the status of. Some are just worn down routes in the grass
over which folks walk their dogs and after the winter maybe they reappear on
a different alignment. In my view all of these are highway=footway, nothing
more or less should be implied other than that their highest denominator is
that you only pass over them on foot, ie they are not for bikes, horses,
cars etc.

To my thinking highway=path is meaningless because it doesn't tell me
anything useful at all. It's a bit like highway=road which has the same
wishy-washy problems.

All the other stuff, eg type of construction, access rights etc etc are
additional tags you might add if you were so inclined. Of course you can
decide to infer that if there are no other tags that the footway carries
certain other properties and perhaps depending on location (rural or urban)
there is a good chance the larger percentage of instances will be correct.
Eg for paved or unpaved surfaces. Not perfect but closer than not
considering anything at all.

Anyway, I'll be keeping with highway=footway and perhaps will add other tags
as I feel like it at the time.

Cheers
Andy

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter Miller [mailto:peter.mil...@itoworld.com]
>Sent: 04 May 2011 3:57 PM
>To: Ed Avis
>Cc: talk-gb@openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] On footpaths
>
>
>
>On 4 May 2011 15:39, Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com> wrote:
>
>
>       Richard Fairhurst <richard@...> writes:
>
>       >>The general practice in this country is to use footway for paved
>paths in
>       >>cities and path for muddier countryside ones (or, perhaps, through
>city
>       >>parks).
>       >
>       >Um, no it isn't. There is absolutely no consensus for using =path
in
>the
>       >countryside rather than =footway. I strongly suspect that if you
>analysed
>       >the data in the UK countryside, you would find 80% footway, 20%
>path.
>
>
>       Ah, sorry for making such a rash generalization.  What I should have
>said is that
>       to the extent path is used instead of footway, it has a sense of
being
>an
>       unsurfaced path.  Footway is used too even in the countryside.
>
>
>
>Here is a global map view showing highway=footway in blue and
>highway=path in brown.
>http://www.itoworld.com/product/data/ito_map/main?view=97
>
>There is indeed something like an 80/20 split in the UK with noticeable
>enthusiasm for 'path' in some parts of the country and a noticable
preference
>for its use in the countryside over the town. In Germany the preference is
>stronger.
>
>This map will remain viewable but will not appear in the pull-down list of
>standard views so do please bookmark it if you want to come back to it.
>
>
>Regards,
>
>
>Peter Miller
>
>
>
>
>
>       --
>       Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com>
>
>
>
>       _______________________________________________
>       Talk-GB mailing list
>       Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
>       http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
>



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