On 02/18/12 01:43, TC Haddad wrote:
On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Paul Johnson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 1:41 PM, TC Haddad <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Paul Johnson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: but overall, the automation saved countless hours of manual name expansion for the minor cost of having to deal with a very small number of largely regionally-isolated edge cases. Can someone explain the original point of name expansion? Is it so that devices that give audio directions using text-to-speech can read fluently? Or was it really all about "saving time"? Because there are other use cases where expanded names are not desirable, particularly in cartography. When map or screen real estate is minimal, expanded names can be downright detrimental to utility. Sounds like a problem for the renderer to solve. It's possible for renderers to easily create abbreviations when full words are not desired, but impossible for automated translation and renderers to expand abbreviations accurately. I *guess*, but that seems unrealistic expectation to put on GPS hardware manufacturers. Particularly if name expansion is inappropriate in one town, but perfectly appropriate in another, and usual practice is to load a large area (like a whole state or region) into a GPS device. How woud a device renderer know to even try to distinguish across community lines?
it wouldn't be the device renderer (in most cases) but the the tools used to process the data - for example, mkgmap would do the shortening for garmin maps
From the user perspective it would be nicer if the names in the data set correspond to the actual street sign names. In Portland the street name is "Tillamook" and if I am on "NE Tillamook" that just helps me know the quadrant of town. "Northeast" on it's own doesn't tell me anything if I can't see the rest of the street name. This example feels more like "tag for reality", vs "tag for the renderer" argument, and the short prefixes feel more like reality in Portland, but maybe that's just me... I do see the value if text-to-speech is the real reason this was done though.
-- Rich _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
