On 08/08/2010 20:39, Paul Johnson wrote:
Let this side of the Atlantic win at least one tagging war,
please...after all, we call them freeways and expressways, not motorways
and trunks; guess who won that one?
Surely the whole point is that there shouldn't be these tagging wars.
There is (I think) consensus about what it IS, the discussion is about
what it is CALLED. And that is something which the world will never
reach a consensus on. The "platform" (i.e. OSM) has to live with that
IMHO and allow the display to vary by locale (or even by user) while
maintaining the link between "soccer", "calcio", "Fussball", "voetbal"
such that it is clear to computers and humans alike that they are the
same thing. Even applications using one of the many English locales
should go through an internationalisation layer. Even Microsoft knows
how to spell "colour" properly ;-)
I don't think this will ever get solved properly (so it goes away and
stays away) until there is at least some kind of mechanism for:
* language-neutral technical values mapped to locale-specific strings
for display/selection
* default values and implications by geographic area (e.g. in the UK,
highway=motorway implies maxspeed=70mph unless tagged otherwise)
The usability of the data is of great importance to potential users. If
the user's application has to be responsible for checking for all the
2000 ways of tagging the rectangle of ground used for the sport we are
discussing here, nobody will be particularly thrilled by this prospect.
Especially when the 2001st way is invented..
Colin
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