2009/11/13 Florian Lohoff <[email protected]>: > On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 07:43:20AM +0000, Peter Childs wrote: >> However in OSM places are points not area's and the areas we do have >> are either to do with admin (ie Counties, Borough's etc) and hence are >> rather less than helpful. >> >> The is_in tag is not a lot of use either due to it being inconsistent. >> >> I could do it with some kind of nearest function but I don't think >> this is going to give me the right answer either. >> >> What is in a place, is often to do with other geographic features, >> like gaps in housing, majro roads etc, and also to do with history, >> >> What I would like to do is write a script that takes the planet and >> gives a list of the places (towns, villages etc) and a polygon/area >> for each place. >> >> While I don't think this list would be worth piping back in to the >> database, it might be useful for knowing what were missing..... >> >> Maybe Places should be area's rather than points anyway. > > This is a quite complicated thing to do - Some parts of the world > fill very quickly with admin boundaries and using them for searching > in the garmins would definitly give them a strong boost which i'd like > to see. > > The other point is that people are used to fuzzy or non exact search. For > example i am living in a Town called Rietberg which has a large area it > covers. > There are multiple suburbs which are very distinct from Rietberg the town > itself. People are used to be able to search for either Rietberg or > even the suburbs names e.g. "Mastholte" or "Varensell" - So in google > ou can search for > > Alt Hammoor 38, Rietberg, Germany > Alt Hammoor 38, Mastholte, Germany > > which is the same place - Postal wise the address is 33397 Rietberg > but all in car navigations are happy to accept Mastholte aswell. > > This gets more complicated taking large citys like Berlin - where the > individual districts are their own administration and therefor have their > own admin_level 8 boundary. People on the other hand are used to search > for Gorßbeerenstraßen, Berlin to work - e.g. spit out all the Großbeerenstraße > Berlin has (Mentioning the District - TomTom does this). > > So - it comes down that people are used to search for admin_level=10 names > and content and for admin_level=6 Content which will then look for all > content in admin_level=6+ .. > > So - i'd vote for strictly using admin boundarys and invent some tags > for giving some hints - It does not make sense to include admin_level=4 > or most of the time it does not make sense to include admin_level=6 for > searching (Kreis Gütersloh for example makes no sense) - But sometimes > it should be included that you look for > > Großebeerenstraße, Berlin > > and get > > Großebeerenstraße, Kreuzberg, Berlin > Großebeerenstraße, Lichterfeld, Berlin > > aswell as beeing able to search for > > Großebeerenstraße, Kreuzberg > > Searching for place nodes and guessing is prone to errors and hinting will be > on a per street level which will be very hard to maintain and include so ... > Admin boundarys are there for a reason ... > > Flo
The problem with admin boundaries, here in the Uk anyway is that they have very little to do with the towns or places they actually are around. Admin_level tends to suggest a simple hierarchy that does not exists. and tends from what I've seen here to be related to govenment admin stration areas, Parish, Borough, County etc etc. Peter _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
