On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 09:38, Christopher Covington <c...@vt.edu> wrote: > > On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 10:59 -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: > > Dave Hansen wrote: > > > > 2) The TIGER import violates one of the most basic principals of OSM: > > "Abbreviations: DO NOT DO IT." > I really don't understand this. If the United States Postal Service and > the Census Bureau have been abbreviating names for centuries, why can't > we? It obviously works well enough. Maybe abbreviations are an issue on > the Continent but I have never seen any confusion caused by using > USPS-recommended abbreviations in the United States.
Agreed. I can understand not wanting to abbreviate words that don't have a standard abbreviation, but the USPS is the de-facto arbiter of how addresses (and therefore street names) are written in the United States, and they have a well-defined list of which words are abbreviated and the abbreviations for those words. Any decent namefinder/geocoder should be able to handle the idea that "100 W 6th St" and "100 West 6th Street" both refer to the same address, and a really good one should also know that "100 West Sixth St" and "100 W 6" would also be at the same location. -- David J. Lynch djly...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
