On Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 12:09:16AM +0100, Frederik Ramm wrote: > On 03.12.2012 22:27, Jochen Topf wrote: > >Why the "osmosis" in there? That seems rather strange to me. Either it is > >some > >general thing that works with all programs, then it shouldn't be named after > >a > >specific program. Or it is not, then it shouldn't be in a general file > >standard. > > It is the replication technology used by Osmosis on the server side. > It works with all programs that use the Osmosis algorithm. It > doesn't work with every thinkable replication mechanism because > those might require other data. Trying to invent something "future > proof" seldom works. > > For example, the way the directories are structured below the > replication URL > (http://planet.openstreetmap.org/replication/minute/000/118/578.osc.gz) > is something specific to the way Osmosis handles its replication; a > program that consumes these files needs knowledge about that. > > If you wanted to encode some kind of generic replication information > then you'd probably boil it down to a simple string field called > "replication_information" and that would then contain something like > "replication_type=osmosis sequence_number=1234 > url=http://something/replication/minute"; or so. > > That would be possible, but it would force every single > writer/consumer of these files to serialize/deserialize the > replication information string (tabs or spaces? spaces allowed after > the equal sign or not? order significant? type=osmosis or > type=Osmosis? ...) - making them top-level fields saves us from > that.
That still isn't specific to Osmosis. Somebody else could implement this algorithm. Markus seems to have done so, albeit a bit differently. The algorithm should be documented somewhere and if you think there can be other algorithms, maybe this one should get a name. But it should not be named after one of the programs that happen to implement it. This is a similar issue as with the main OSM map, which was named "Mapnik" after the rendering program which lead to no end of confusion. Jochen -- Jochen Topf joc...@remote.org http://www.remote.org/jochen/ +49-721-388298 _______________________________________________ dev mailing list dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
