On 23/03/2009 13:45, Adam Schreiber wrote: >> Similarly, many US states have capitals which would otherwise be relatively >> insignificant towns/cities (take Albany NY for example). Their >> administrative function makes them more important than population alone >> would suggest. > > Albany would also no doubt have capital=yes set to further elevate it.
Precisely my point: population is not enough. There is a range of factors which any renderer or other data consumer would have to take into account. (capital is not for states but for nations BTW). Consider a more obscure example. Walsingham in Norfolk, UK is a tiny village. However, it's importance is somewhat elevated over similar size neighbours because it is an internationally known centre of catholic pilgrimage. I would say, therefore, all other things being equal, if you could only display the names of one of the group of neighbouring villages, one should choose Walsingham. I don't think it is reasonable for the renderers to have to know about religious attractions (just an example, among many other possibilities) to be able to take this decision, so surely we have to have some kind of more generic way to express the importance. One further point about population is that this data is not available for the UK - it is crown copyright. (I think settlement area would be a close correlate, at least within the same culture, so that might allow us to estimate it based on something we can measure ourselves). David _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
