<quote author="johnw" The difference between a cycleway, a footway, and a trail can be access rules, but mostly its *the built condition of the way* and that *will* vary from a 1st world to 3rd would country - and from continent to continent.</quote>
Therefore proper tags on the individual way would be helpful like surface, width, incline, smoothness, sac_scale, mtb:scale etc. <quote author="johnw" Tagging implies the built condition - and assumptions made from that tagging affect rendering - which therefore affects routing decisions or user choice of ways. </quote> Rendering should never rely on assumptions but on physical values. <quote author="johnw" And representing the "duckiness" of the way is extremely important in the top key : is it a trail through the forest (where you could walk or bike), a narrow sidewalk covered with poles and driveway entrances (but can still legally bike on as you go to the market) or a nice cycleway along the river (that you can also walk on as you go from village to village)? Is the only difference surface, width, and legality? *Absolutely not!* </quote> I get the impression, you overestimate the importance of duck tagging. It's not that intuitive and explicit as you think, non-native English mappers may have different assumptions of what is semantically implied or what is usable according to their region. <quote author="johnw" In places where almost every footway is for bicycle and foot, and horses are non-existent (they are more concerned about motor_scooter=no [or whatever scooter access is]), trying to show its usage with surface (all are paved in urban settings), width (footway can vary greatly in just 100m, so no help there) - the duckiness has to be found in the top tag - as it is for road values - which =path is *useless* for. </quote> A footway opend to bicycles is a multi-use-path and should be distinguished from a footway or even sidewalk restricted exclusively to pedestrians. geow -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/highway-footway-Advanced-definition-Distinction-footway-vs-path-tp5851506p5851877.html Sent from the Tagging mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging