On 14/09/2014, Norbert Wenzel <norbert.wenzel.li...@gmail.com> wrote: > How is making a data search accept all nameXXXXXXXXX fields with X being > any arbitrary number easier, than splitting all values at semicola? The > data preprocessing has to be fixed (? has it, or are semicola already > supported by Nominatim?) for all variants, and I'd say a simple string > split at a semicolon is easier to implement than checking every key for > possible numbers at the end. > > And the semicolon list is in my eyes more logical when it comes to > removed values, eg. what does it mean when name2 is deleted, but name3 > still exists?
The problem with semicolon-separated values is that you can never be sure wether you're looking at multiple values, or one value that happens to contain a semicolon. That's part of the reason why other tags sometimes use a different separator (a coma, a pipe...). It's messy. Varying the key name is only slightly better: you know for sure that there are multiple values, but finding all those values is a bit of a nightmare (foo, foo_2, foo2, foo:2, foo[2], alt_foo, old_foo...). With some standardisation it could work (perhaps aided by editor support), but it hasn't happened yet. Supporting multiple values natively in the osm data model would provide a clean and efficient solution, but updating all the tools to support it would be a huge undertaking. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
