I knew I would be opening Pandora's box when I made those statements. As for tracks, I should have prefaced my remarks with *In My Opinion* — I am well aware that it's too late to change the current situation.
I would still argue that smoothness is a valuable parameter. Ignoring speed limits and such, it determines how fast you can *comfortably* travel on a particular highway, among other (more subjective) things. And I'm familiar with the long thread about trafficability, to the extent that I could follow all the various opinions and problems it exposed. This whole thing is a tough nut to crack. Which is one reason I suggested those other terms to describe "stiffness" which I just can't get my head around. Stiffness just is not right for that use. I dunno what I would rather do. Maybe as you suggest, it should simply be removed. Cheers, Dave On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 1:59 PM, David Bannon <[email protected]>wrote: > Good on you Dave, I do like a good rant ! > > On Mon, 2014-03-17 at 10:47 +0700, Dave Swarthout wrote: > > > > <Begin rant>....IMO tracktype should describe the physical > > characteristics of a track, not a highway, and it should have nothing > > to do with "how well maintained" it is. > > Great in an ideal world Dave. However, there are many highways in the > world that are also 'tracks'. > > Recognising this, the OSM Lords have given us highway= tags to describe > the purpose of a road. And tracktype= to describe the condition. Many > cases, the tracktype= is not needed as its condition matches its > purpose. But in situations where that is not the case, life threatening > situations arise when a map user is not appropriately warned. > > I agree tracktype may not be ideal but its better that the rest and I > think its too late to dream up a new one. > > > ...... those surfaces have an additional important characteristic > > called smoothness. > > 'smoothness=' is not really appropriate as there are many, many roads > that have issues beyond smoothness. I have seen tracks that appeared > beautifully smooth but were beyond my ability ! > > > How a "highway" ever got a tracktype tag is beyond me and seems a big > > mistake. > > That was part of the original definition of tracktype= when it was > approved. > > > .... As far as smoothness is concerned, many have derided it as being > > too subjective. > > Look, lets be honest, just about anything in this world except the > integer series has some subjective aspect. Lets get over it ! > > > > > say, "particularly regarding surface stiffness", IMO the word > > Yes, Dave, I agree, Fernando's use of the word 'stiffness' is a bit > dodgy. But thats a 'subjective' opinion. > > > Perhaps soundness, permanence, or better yet, durability. > No, I really think this is about how usable a road is given a set of > vehicle and driver experience. We, on the AU mailing list discussed > words like 'trafficability' and, from memory, some even worse ones ! > > But I do want a good solution and I'll agree to an OK one if its all I > can get. I want to badger the renderers to take note of the state of a > road before someone gets killed using an OSM map. Its only a matter of > time. > > David > > > -- Dave Swarthout Homer, Alaska Chiang Mai, Thailand Travel Blog at http://dswarthout.blogspot.com
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