Christopher Hoess wrote: > Specifically, what made me switch was thinking about renderers, > routers, and other consumers of the data.
OSM's most valuable resource is mappers. We should therefore optimise tagging schemes for ease of mapping. I don't think non-programmers realise how easy it actually is to cope with tag variations, especially now that our tools are so sophisticated. For renderers, the standard is osm2pgsql+Mapnik/Tilemill: Carto makes it easy to assemble tagging rules, and osm2pgsql has (just!) got lua-based tag transformations. For routers, the standard is OSRM, and that too has lua-based tag transformations. I'm currently working on two rendering projects (one for bikes, one for boats) and one routing project (for bikes). Even coping with paths, the most complex tagging scheme that we have, is really easy with the lua+Carto combination; just 20 lines of code sorts out the complexities of access=, bicycle=, designation=, highway=, tracktype=, and surface= into the three rendering categories I want. So for the tiny number of renderers/routers which want to show bridge types differently - and my canal renderer will be one of them! - differentiating based on a single bridge= tag is plenty easy enough. For the majority of renderers/routers, "it's a bridge" will suffice. The simplicity and reduced burden for mappers wins out, as indeed it should always do. And I'm looking forward to people tagging more swing bridges and lift bridges so I can make a nice canal map. :) cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Bridges-redux-tp5760227p5760454.html Sent from the Tagging mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging