Well said John. When we now have highway=path, we need a subtag.

Question is, on what criteria would we differentiate a trail from another
"path"? Groomed vs beaten may not be specific enough. But by using some
combination of dictionary definitions of trail, in the sense of path, could
we come up with some verifiable criteria for when such a subtag should be
used? What I'm looking for is to differentiate forest and mountain paths
from urban paths or groomed, smooth paths. When people have been clearing
forest to make a path more visible and passable, that's still a beaten path
to me.

And yes, path=trail would probably need to be used for trails tagged as
footway too, although I personally see footway as an urban path and always
use path for a trail.

Whatever subtag , we're still stuck with all those cases when highway=path
is not combined with any other tag (whether it should be path=trail or
anything else). How would we treat those? Obviously we can't take it for
granted that those cases should have path=trail.


   1. Can we agree on whether or not we need a subtag like path=trail?
   Since it's probably too late for highway=trail, which by all means would
   have been the best option.
   2. If we introduce path=trail, what would be the criteria for when it
   should be used?
   3. What about all the cases of highway=path that don't have and will not
   have path=trail? Old or new. Some probably should (like when
   surface=ground), others should never have path=trail. It will still make it
   difficult to render those cases and for data consumers to choose a fallback
   value for those cases.
   4. What about edge cases? It may have been a beaten path that has been
   groomed with better surface material to make it more accessible for
   example. Would it still be considered for path=trail?


/Daniel

Den sön 24 maj 2020 kl 16:05 skrev John Willis via Tagging <
tagging@openstreetmap.org>:

> The sac=scale is a attribute of trails.
>
> Yet we do not explicitly state “this is a trail”
>
> We should have a path=trail subtag.
>
> The presence or absence of a sac_scale Tag shouldn’t mean it is a trail.
>
> Imagine we had no highway=track. That we dumped all tracks into
> highway=service. That is what we are doing now with trails.
>
> Would you want to depend on the tracktype=* tag for denoting that it is,
> in fact, a track? At least track type has “track” in the key name.
> If someone didn’t set it, it would map like the parking lots and alleyways
> in cities. Madness.
>
> Sac_scale is an arcane attribute for hiking nerds - it is great to have,
> but shouldn’t be the tag that differentiates a hiking trail from a sidewalk
> in OSM. That should have been a separate tag from day one, but we are now
> stuck with the monstrosity that is path=.
>
> At least subkey it.
>
>
> Javbw
>
> On May 24, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Andrew Harvey <andrew.harv...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> 
>
>
> On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 07:42, John Willis via Tagging <
> tagging@openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
>> =path is such a horrible catch-all tag and one that is extremely
>> entrenched - I am surprised no one has implemented a path=trail subtag,
>> similar to sidewalk, so we can separate all the hiking trails and other
>> “hiking” paths, and then apply different hiking limitations you wouldn’t
>> expect to find on a sidewalk or playground way.
>>
>
> Right now you can use
> sac_scale=hiking,mountain_hiking,demanding_mountain_hiking to indicate if a
> path is a hiking trail. Though you can't really currently say something is
> not a hiking trail.
>
> On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 10:01, Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.ke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 5:42 PM John Willis via Tagging
>> <tagging@openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > =path is such a horrible catch-all tag and one that is extremely
>> entrenched - I am surprised no one has implemented a path=trail subtag,
>> similar to sidewalk, so we can separate all the hiking trails and other
>> “hiking” paths, and then apply different hiking limitations you wouldn’t
>> expect to find on a sidewalk or playground way.
>> >
>> > Mixing trails and sidewalks in the path key is as horrible as mixing up
>> runways and train tracks in a “highway=not_car” way.
>>
>> Yeah. But it's so entrenched that trolltags are probably the only way
>> out of the mess. And sac_scale is _surely_ not the right trolltag! The
>> problem with sac_scale is that it's an impossible scale. I'm told that
>> https://youtu.be/VKsD1qBpVYc?t=533 is still only a 2 out of 6 on that
>> scale, and that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y5_lbQZJwQ is still
>> only a 3. Note that one misstep on either of those trails can easily
>> mean death.
>>
>
>  https://youtu.be/VKsD1qBpVYc?t=533 I would tag
> as sac_scale=demanding_mountain_hiking, my rule of thumb is anything where
> the average person would need to use their hands to get over an obstacle
> is demanding_mountain_hiking. This is what the wiki says too "exposed sites
> may be secured with ropes or chains, possible need to use hands for
> balance".
>
> Anything that doesn't need hands, but has a fall hazard/is exposed would
> be sac_scale=mountain_hiking (assuming it's not alpine).
>
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