Simon Ward <[email protected]> writes: > On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 02:50:37PM -0500, Russ Nelson wrote: >> >> On Jan 27, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Manfred Podzkiewitz wrote: >> >> > Hello, i have a question about the handling of unoffical, or ethnic, >> > or >> > historic names of towns and villages. >> The TIGER import in the USA uses name_1 for alternate names. Perhaps >> we should view all tags starting with "name" as potential names? >> That points to using "nameEN" for the English name of a city, and >> "nameDE" for the German name of the same city, etc. >> >> Or should that be "name:EN" and "name:DE"? > > These already exist, see Key:name[1]. > > This doesn’t account for multiple names in the same language, though. I > can also imagine a place having several old names over time, while > old_name=* really only allows for one.
IMHO there really needs to be a well defined mechanism that allows a tag to have multiple values. To invent new keys like old_name_1 and old_name_2 is certainly not optimal. The FAQ has the recommendation of separating multiple values with a ';' and to enter a semicolon that is part of the data as ';;'. That's actually error prone if someone enters a semicolon who doesn't know about the rule. I think that should better be reversed or '\;' be used as separator because this is much less likely to appear in regular data. Of course it is also possible to use relations. But, for tags that simply add a property to an object (like old_name) this is overkill. Matthias _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
