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Hello everyone, I wonder if this came up before, but I already thought about this problem for some time: I think the biggest advantage of OSM would be the ability to create country specific OSM maps. To illustrate this problem, I would give the following example: I live in Germany, where all the name tags are written in German - which I think is correct. If I take a look at another European country, which is also written in latin characters, I see their language - I can read it, but don't necessarily understand it. For example, if I take a look at prague, which would be called "Prag" in German, I just find "Praha". I may have heard that this is the same, but it is a little bit inconvenient. If I look for the "Karlsbrücke", I only find the "Karluv most". I would still understand what is what, but it is nonetheless a little bit inconvenient for me. Another situation: If I take a look at Moscow, I cannot read anything at all. Everything is written in Cyrillic. This is of course fine for Russians, but if I want to read it, I don't have any chance. Next situation: I take a look at Tokyo. There, the kind Japanese have done me the favour to write the city name as "東京 (Tokyo)". I can instantly read the name. But there are two problems: First: In German, the name of Tokyo is not "Tokyo", but "Tokio". I don't see that there :-( (I have to admit, this is only a minor problem). Second: I just wonder, but don't the Japanese think that this romanisation there is a little bit of a nuisance? Maybe they would rather see the pronounciation of the cities in Hiragana, not in latin letters, or not at all? Also, the font for the Japanese character looks a little bit weird... Ah, of course, it is a Mainland Chinese font, which is currently used for China, Taiwan and Japan, even though each country should have their own font. Until now, all this is about the names... but there is some other issue: Maybe in some countries, highways are usually displayed in another kind of colour, not the one which is currently used. Also, maybe the crossings have a name (like in Japan), which should be rendered, but is currently not done. For example, OSM would get the permission to use the logos of the subway system in one city. It would be great to use the logo as a symbol of the subway station, but logically this is useful for only that specific city. Thus, I wonder if the following could not be implemented: First, every country group creates their own style set... Colour of streets, rendering of names, usage of logos (with permission of the companies, of course) etc. Then, this style set is shared with the other groups, who would then make some modifications for their own language and country: Display the names in two languages at the same time (e.g. 東京 Tokio ), or maybe change the colours of the streets again etc. After that, every country has its own style for OSM, which would be much more familar to the citizens in that country. People from another country instead would get an altered version, suited for their needs (translated geographic names etc.). If one country needs to change their style set (for example, a new subway system was created), the other groups would just check the changes and accept or modify it. Then, the individual OSM websites (e.g. www.openstreetmap.de, www.openstreetmap.jp, www.openstreetmap.ru etc.) would offer a language version suited for everyone. I really think that this would give OSM a huge advantage over e.g. Google Maps. Thanks, Gerrit |
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