On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:12:13 +0100, "Robert (Jamie) Munro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Personally, I don't think OSM should be trying to do this in the > abstract. I think that as people develop routing applications, they > should develop their own formats and converters from OSM XML format, > optimised to how their particular applications work. As routing > applications evolve, they could copy ideas and formats from each other. > I don't think we should try to invent a format that is targeted at a > particular market. A binary-format that is indexed and directly usable can open the door to many new tools. It is not trivial to write and not everyone is capable of defining one. You make it sound like a trivial step but it takes quite a bit more then a single developer can come up with whereas writing a parser for it is very easy. Also most formats used by existing software are not documented, highly specific or require that one database that this software is using. Noone is forced to use the format we are discussing and it will certainly not be perfect for every developer. > It may be worth repackaging OSM XML and changesets as a binary format > that is more compact, but routing applications would still need to index > it before they could use it. I don't agree here. The existing xml-format is already great for general interchange. Having it zipped there is no need for a new format just to make it smaller (It will probably not get any smaller then today). > Certianly I don't think that OSM centrally should be splitting the data > into "routing layers". I strongly agree. A binary-format should not loose any information that may be usefull to an application. Marcus _______________________________________________ Routing mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/routing
