Inasmuch as the underlying concepts are identical (more or less), I don't like the idea that we can use different key name or values to represent those concepts.
Sure anyone can tag oneway/one_way=yes/true/1/si/hai/oui/jå and write out all the equivalences in a likeness XML file, but this complicates use of the data for little benefit. I think of some OSM tags as similar to the keywords of a programming language. Sure you can translate keywords like "print" and "open" into the native language of the programmer and then do pre-processing of the code or use a specialized compiler, but what for? (Take note that even programming languages that were invented by non-native English speakers use English keywords for consistency. Japan's Ruby comes into mind.) So allowing amenity=bankautomat as a synonym for amenity=atm even if they represent identical concepts is not really good. Push for i18n on the user interfaces, not on the non-name data. On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:25 AM, SteveC <st...@asklater.com> wrote: > I want to revive a very old idea - tag equivalences. It might be > solving a problem that doesn't exist or someone might have done it and > I've missed it. > > I'm not a socialist moral relativist when it comes to cultural > comparisons, but forcing the entire world to tag their largest class > of vehicular infrastructure as highway=motorway isn't super efficient > either maybe. > > It would be nice to allow people to tag things as motorway, freeway, > autobahn or whatever makes sense. Then, if your renderer or routing > software knows about them, great. If not, then there should be > something that tells them what they're roughly like. > > So I think step one is to have an XML file which points out these > equivalences. It will be rough. It won't know that an autobahn has no > speed limit or a freeway is usually 55mph or a motorway is usually > 70mph. The first step is just a hand wavy... I don't know what a > autobahn is, but it's roughly like a motorway, ah ok. > > Then it will free us up to start to do much more specific country > rendering and routing. > > Later, we can evolve it to be an API or know all sorts of things, but > I want to put together version 0.1 and have people like Jon Burgess > and Steve Chilton care about it because of rendering and Frederik and > Richard care because of editing. I would want it to be required by all > editors and routers and renderers in future, if it was to be useful. > > Therefore, here's my straw man to start it off > > <!-- this is a straw man and might not even parse as XML. C'est la vie > --> > <likenesses version="0.1"> > > <likeness object="way" key="highway"> > <likeness value="motorway" /> > <likeness value="freeway" /> > <likeness value="autobahn" /> > </likeness> > > <likeness object="node" key="amenity"> > <likeness value="atm" /> > <likeness value="bankautomat" /> > <likeness value="geldautomat" /> > </likeness> > > </likenesses> > > If you want to hack on this, it's at > > http://svn.openstreetmap.org/misc/likenesses/likeness.xml > > The point here is that if you're a routing engine and you know about > motorways you treat autobahns and freeways as roughly the same, or > identical if you like. If you want to then go on and figure out more > details, please do! If you're a renderer and you know what an icon for > amenity=atm is, then you know you can use this for amenity=bakautomat. > > The next step is that osm2pgsql uses this to convert things it doesn't > know about, or the big mapnik xml files do, or whatever. There are > glaring problems like maybe we don't want people to use highway but > whatever makes sense for them - that is we want the keys *and* values > to be mutable. But, let's take step one first. > > Thoughts? > > Yours &c. > > Steve > > _______________________________________________ > dev mailing list > dev@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev > -- http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com
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