On 26/10/2014, Christoph Hormann <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't see what information is missing and cannot be easily determined > automatically with a properly placed node that is contained in an > area - except for the outer edge of course, which is usually > ill-defined though as you said yourself. > > If you think about it a bit and do not try to place the node where you > would place the label (which depends on the map projection anyway) > properly placing a node for a bay is usually quite simple. The most > difficult are long, fjord-like bays where a way along them would be > more appropriate.
I'm really curious what your method to figure out the bay area from the node is, because even as a human I find that most bay nodes can lead to many different interpretations. A computer algorythm would probably get it wrong most of the time. Think back to the "bays within bays" situation. How far along the coast do this bay extend ? Are those two nearby nodes separate bays or overlapping ones ? The situation is even harder to gauge when there is no imagery to give a sense of scale. I'm sure most mappers just put the node where they'd put the label (blissfully ignoring scales and projections). Bays-as-polygons bring real value by sorting out this mess. > Specific arguments aside - i am not sure if you realize the consequences > it would have if subareas of oceans would generally be mapped as > polygons - large bays usually contain smaller bays and are parts of a > sea and there might be a strait between an island and the coast within > that bay. If you want to edit the coastline in such situation you > would end up having to deal with a handful of convoluted multipolygon > relations, some of them of colossal size. Properly editing coastlines > is difficult for beginners in the first place. This would make it > borderline impossible. Some coastline ways would belong to more relations, so what ? They already usually belong to 3-4 administrative boundary relations, adding 1-2 bays won't make a big difference. I'm tired of the "multipolygons are complicated, avoid them" argument, it should be "multipolygons are complicated, make them simpler". _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
