> And later on, if the building > gets > used for something else, you could perhaps change it to: > > shop=candy > name=Fred's Wine Gum Emporium > former:amenity=pub > former:name=The Blue Grape # or old_name > former=<date> # ugh, mabye not > > Well, it appeals to the stupid, plodding, pattern-seeking part > of my > brain, kinda.
But it probably is too limited. A couple of examples that spring to mind. A building in Wolverhampton that was a cinema when my dad was young has since been things like a bank and a pound shop at various stages and I think is now a pub. How many former tags will you support? Similarly there was a shop in Oxford that was a cheese shop (Little Clarendon Street circa 1987) that was a childs toy or clothes shop (I forget which) the following year and I am sure is something else again now. And the Woolworths in Wolverhampton which until recently (I'm assuming it is now closed) was the "lower ground" version of the Woolworths I remember as a child which was about 4 floors tall in total. I believe Boots took over what used to be the Woolworths ground floor but I moved away almost a decade ago so my memories are a little rusted. There are shops near here that probably have a different business (or two) in them every year. If you're going to go with prefixes you'll want something like 20080101-20080606:name=Spring Fashions Limited and 20080607-20081231:name=Fireworks'R'Us (names made up). For now I'm mapping what is actually here. If something changes in reality I change it in OSM. If at some point in the future OSM supports historical mapping in some way then I may look at perhaps going to the effort of adding historical tags as well as updating the existing ones. Railways, which I think may have triggered this discussion (or may have cropped up recently on another related email list) are an interesting case. Abandoned railways are something that currently exist in places, until they are converted into footpaths or something else. This isn't as such historic mapping as mapping the bits of an abandoned railway that still exist. Disused pubs are something I'm in two minds about. In some cases the building is an obvious landmark which would be a useful PoI whether it opens or not. And whether it opens or not is something which would be useful additional information for anyone wanting to visit the place. But disused pubs where the sign has been removed and it has perhaps changed to residential use I don't feel should still be marked. A bit like "the old post office" or "old bakehouse" as properties surrounding an office I used to live were both residential properties (one of which was rented on behalf of Mark McGhee when he was managing Wolves, and we could see into his kitchen from our office). So I guess I'm in the map what exists now camp, until OSM has some better method of historical (or future - and I admit I've tagged a highway under construction) tagging. Ed _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
