The way I would approach this professionally would be to define the
requirements first.
In this case we have a requirement to display the name in the language
of choice.
We also have a requirement to be compatible with existing software.
Pragmatically I would recommend changing the name field to use only an 8
bit Latin alphabet character set recognizing that not all systems can
handle more complex character sets. Which precise character set should
be chosen would a be subject for discussion but either ISO-8859-1 or
Windows-1252 would be contenders. My personal preference would be the
ISO standard.
Unicode is nice but we managed with 6 bit character sets for many years
when I started with computers. Even accented characters were a major
problem. Also remember that .OSM data is in XML format and XML came out
of SGML which was first used to transmit documents over modems so only 7
bits where available for encoding characters. The extended characters
use a special escape code sequence to hold the unicode characters.
Realistically software never wears out but source code gets lost.
Compilers and operating systems get updated. It may not be possible to
modify existing software to handle unicode characters. I have a
perfectly good scanner sitting in the corner that no long can be used
with Win 10 because of a new and improved driver. With the
OpenStreetMap environment there isn't even a way to get a complete list
of software that uses the OpenStreetMap data so it can be tested.
The local language can be added in a name: then software that can
handle the local names can pick it up. Osmand etc. can be configured to
use the local name transparently so the local population can use it in
the language of their choice.
This approach would appear to meet the requirements. The argument that
we should change all the existing software to meet a requirement that
was not clearly defined when the software was written doesn't make sense
to me.
Cheerio John
Frederik Ramm wrote on 2019-11-28 3:25 AM:
John,
On 28.11.19 01:40, John Whelan wrote:
Is there any reason why name:en could not be used?
The country's official language requires a "non-standard" font to be
available which does not seem to be a given on all platforms. Like if
you set up a standard tile server and don't install extra fonts you will
see little squares instead of place names all over China.
Apparently not all applications are as good in name:xx handling as
OsmAnd. A recurring point in the discussion is that the proponents of
using the official language say "we shouldn't fall back to English name
tags just because some apps/web sites are broken, we should file bug
reports with them instead", and the proponents of using English say
"let's be pragmatic, there's no way all these apps/sites will be fixed
within a short time, so we should use English".
Bye
Frederik
--
Sent from Postbox <https://www.postbox-inc.com>
_______________________________________________
HOT mailing list
HOT@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
