Hi, > Yes, I meant to say if every *polygon* which is represented as a closed > way was guaranteed to have an "area=yes" tag or some other > distinguishing feature.
You are right in saying that not having an explicit polygon type makes OSM stick out from the standard OGC/ISO19100/whatever geometry models. > And the reason for the area type not there is because it has not been > used when it was there. > Really? I never knew OSM had a polygon type. It was called "area" and was supported by API 0.3. I think it was in the API but not supported by JOSM and that's the reason nobody used it. The reason it wasn't supported in JOSM was probably a misunderstanding between SteveC and Imi, or at least that's what I've gathered. Remember, that was a time when software development in the project was driven by three or four people ,-) anyway, looking back doesn't help. We have the following options: 1. re-instate the "area" type during the next API update. 2. create an independent data source that maps a set of tags to a boolean "area" property. this data source might be a wiki page or SVN file that is read by the processing software, or might even be a web service. any software dealing with areas would use that service to know what makes an area and what doesn't. 3. create a script that takes the planet file and uploads an added "area=yes" to anything it considers an area. 4. modify the API to generate an "area=yes" tag on-the-fly whenever it returns a way whose tags make it an area. 5. live with what we've got. As you say, option 5 is a bit sub-optimal because stuff has to be replicated everywhere. Personally I lean towards option 2; this would still require replication of the "check tags against list" logic in all applications but the list would come from a central source that's the same for wall. I think we have similar "shared configuration" things elsewhere and they seem to work. Bye Frederik _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
