I'm grouping a replies to several posts for this topic...
On 9 May 2008, at 19:13, Jeffrey Martin wrote:
Typos in real words are easier to detect than a mistake in entering
a number.
In the scenario I was suggesting numbers would only replace words for
type tags and users would never see the numbers but would just see
words (in their own language) mapped to/from numbers in the database
by the editor/viewer software. This somewhere between the ID numbers
(set purely by software) and latitude/longitude (which users do not
enter directly) and all the other tags, most of which (like name=)
require user direct input.
From: "Jeffrey Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 9 May 2008 15:09:39 BDT
To: "elvin ibbotson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "OSM Talk"
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] tagging and rendering
The rendering should be separate from the data. Marking a hiking trail
as an autobahn so it will be a different color or be visible on higher
zoom levels I think we all agree is wrong.
Provided the data is correct, I don't see a problem with altering the
way data is collected and recorded to make it easier for renderers,
and those who program them and write the rendering rules.
----
I can see the attraction to the use of numbers for the values of the
highway tag. Having a new system that does not use terms that
have other meanings can force people to think about the OSM
definitions of the values. The UK centric terms have this effect
for me. I have to think about what motorway means for the US
or Korea in terms of the OSM definition because I have no competing
definition of the term motorway in my mind. For me motorway
only has an OSM definition.
I have today tagged a little country lane in my area as a railway
line as well as highway=unclassified, as the free-from tagging system
would seem to allow this and I wanted to see how it will be rendered
by Mapnik and Osmarender. I'm all for freedom but I think the type
of a node or way is (like node ID and latitude/longitude) more
fundamental than most tags which would retain user input and the
potential to invent new tags.
From: Jonathan Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 9 May 2008 19:55:01 BDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] tagging and rendering
elvin ibbotson wrote:
Things humans read need to be human readable. The database should
be read by software and if it can be faster and more efficient
using numbers, numbers are what should be used.
The best way of proving this would be to come up with your own
version of the OSM server stack that used ID numbers internally,
while still outputting human-readable tag names. How long do you
think it would take you?
I don't think we want another server. I can already demonstrate it:
I am currently experimenting with binary data downloads for my mobile
OSM viewer, mom. I need data for scales from 3 (just coastlines and
country boundaries for enormous areas) to scale 15 (almost everything
in a limited area) and until there is a binary API the data has to be
sourced as XML then parsed to binary. The standard OSM API does not
have any level-of-detail filtering so I am using XAPI. To get data
for a particular scale I have to make several calls to the XAPI for
each feature group (natural, highway, waterway, ...) in turn, and
each call takes quite a bit of setting up in the code. If, for
example, the feature types were structured using a numerical system
such that so that all natural features began with 0, all highways
with 1, etc, but everything needed at scales smaller than 5 ended
with numbers smaller than 3 (eg. coastlines: 01; trunk roads: 12) I
could make a simple call for features less than *3.
From: "Martijn van Oosterhout" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 9 May 2008 19:51:18 BDT
To: "Jeffrey Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: OSM Talk <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] street traits
On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 8:30 PM, Jeffrey Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
A name for each kind of road in a person's country could be set up
as an
editor feature. I select
"mountain road 2" from my list and it fills in the number of
lanes, lane
size, shoulder size, etc.
for me.
Strangly enough, JOSM supports this already.
Another option might be to have some kind of bot that fills in
specific data
based on country
specific highway tags.
I thin you're missing something though. Just because it says
highway=motorway doesn't mean it looks identical everywhere. It means
what a motorway is in the country its located in. Just determine which
types of roads there are (there are about 7 usually, no matter what
the country) and then map those to the existing highway tags. All
done.
If you want to add stuff like lanes/etc go ahead, but for the basics
you don't need it.
A new thread but more evidence that feature type tagging is
fundamental and may need rethinking. _______________________________________________
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