On 22/01/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdre...@gmail.com> wrote: > a minor issue with semicolon separated lists: we don't have yet defined how > to escape actual semicolons in values.
To me, that is actually a major issue (putting blank fields in the same basket). Defining how litteral semicolons and blank fields should be represented isn't that hard. But making sure that consumers (let alone editors) all follow whatever algorythm we'd end up choosing is damn near impossible. Even if you wave your magik wand and convert all programs today, tomorrow 10 new program will be writen that just uses split(value,';') because that's the obvious implementation. That impossibility is why I'm convinced that semicolons as the only way to support multiple values is a very bad idea, despite being often nicer to look at. They're fine to use for simple cases, but not for anything complex or wide-ranging. Contrast semicolons with the key_<number> scheme, which can safely be implemented universally for all keys by a consumer, or the various key:subkey schemes which can present more subtle information. And contrary to semicolons, both those schemes downgrade gracefuly when the consumer doesn't handle multiple-value schemes. _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging