On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 6:38 AM, Dave F. <dave...@madasafish.com> wrote: > Describe the physical condition of a way, with tags such as 'surface' & let > the users decide if it's their idea of hikable.
Let me say immediately that the ideology of "describe the physical characteristics, and let people make up their own mind" is deeply flawed at both ends. It would be extremely time consuming to collect the level of data to make that work - measuring widths, roughness etc at many points along a track. And presenting all that fine-grained data to end users is not useful either: it needs to be distilled into something that can be processed quickly by someone reading a map. I've got nothing against people using this approach, but I find it extremely impractical and inefficient for my purposes. Now, back to the discussion. I've probably tried to compress too many distinctions in here. There is: a) rough vs smooth (by "rough" I actually meant the opposite of "careful", not the opposite of "smooth") b) wide vs narrow c) constructed vs natural d) official vs unofficial e) dirt vs surfaced Benefits of tagging correctly would include: 1) routing for practical walkers (getting from A to B, avoiding muddy paths perhaps) 2) routing for recreational walkers (comfortable with a wider range of tracks) 3) routing for practical cyclists (getting from A to B) 4) routing for adventure/mtb cyclists (having fun) 5) showing on appropriate maps (unofficial footpads shouldn't show up on official town or park maps, even if useful) So, what kind of scheme would achieve the above, as efficiently as possible? I agree with Sam that it's not a trivial problem. One tentative idea: highway=footway: 1, 5 and maybe 3 highway=path, path=footpad: 2 and maybe 4 But how to tag a mountain bike path that pedestrians are forbidden from using? path=footpad, foot=no seems weird. Alternatives would be to focus on the official/unofficial distinction, the surface, the width etc. But these seem a bit indirect. Thoughts? Steve _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
