On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Ross Scanlon <[email protected]> wrote: > If the info in the database is Alpha St then what's to say the it is not > Alpha Saint or Alpha Strip or Alpha Street and so you end up with lot's of > extraneous results. > > By entering the full type of street, road, etc it's then just a matter of > having an appropriate abbreviation look up table to convert from before > searching going the other way is more difficult. So entering Alpha Street > will return the correct info but likewise so will Alpha St.
I honestly think it's a totally arbitrary decision whether we do the interpretation of "St" -> "Street" (and vice versa) at the time we record it, or at the time we generate a map. But we've made the decision (we expand them at the time we record it), so let's just stick with it and be consistent. We should also make our tools as flexible as possible, to allow people to search both abbreviated and unabbreviated forms. Even to the extent that "Saint Kilda" should work, even though it's never ever spelt out like that. (There never was a saint by that name...) Steve _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
