Morten Kjeldgaard wrote: > On 04/12/2009, at 06.49, Steve Bennett wrote: > > This discussion is reminiscent of other discussions just like it.
Indeed it now reminds me of the "mapping everything as areas" thread that I recently started. > There are two orthogonal approaches to mapping in the OSM. One is the > "drawing" approach, which is the most intuitive, since it reminds of > the way maps have been drawn with paper and pencil for hundreds of > years. The drawing approach is favoured by newbies [..] > [..] > There's nothing you can do with drawing that can't be done with > tagging, and there's in principle nothing being done with tagging that > can't be rendered beautifully on the final map. It only depends on the > richness of the tagging language and the sophistication of the > renderers. > > It is very important that OSM keeps its head straight and doesn't > succumb to the increasing pressure of making the map a 2D-drawing of > the world. I'm one of those newbies who got tempted and that was the reason why I asked the questions in the above-mentioned thread. Now I am increasingly realizing the power of connectivity and how the useful graph results from the node & way tagging approach that seems to be the foundation of OpenStreetMap as it stands today. Area mapping does have a role, but it now seems to be more specialized than my innocent eyes used to believe. But although I'm learning the ways of OpenStreetMap, I'm learning by observing what others do and experimenting on my own. It works and in due time I'm sure I'll become a decent mapper, but that process could be more efficient. Some people on this list, such as you, seem to have a good grasp of the concepts. Would you be so kind as to start a wiki page that explains good practices and discernment in choosing what should be mapped as a tagged line and what really requires an area ? I'm sure that the whole project would benefit if arguments could be articulated in a demonstration that would convince the wondering newbies such as me. There is surely not a single best way, but the need for a correct connected graph is definitely a good frame into which our methods must fit. Leveraging your experience to get everyone to understand that will surely be a significant contribution to data quality. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
