On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Paul Johnson <ba...@ursamundi.org> wrote:
but overall, the automation saved countless hours of manual name expansion > for the minor cost of having to deal with a very small number of largely > regionally-isolated edge cases. > > Can someone explain the original point of name expansion? Is it so that devices that give audio directions using text-to-speech can read fluently? Or was it really all about "saving time"? Because there are other use cases where expanded names are not desirable, particularly in cartography. When map or screen real estate is minimal, expanded names can be downright detrimental to utility. For example: in Portland all the expanded quadrant names (NE,NW, SE, SW) really detract from the experience of using osm extracts on handheld GPS. All the streets in an area of interest end up looking like they have the same name because all that fits on the street segments is the first word of the expanded quadrant label and not the "real" part of the name. So "NE Tillamook" and "NE Hancock" both just label as "Northeast"... and that is separate from the issue that people don't actually write addresses here as "Northeast Tillamook". Anyway, maybe that is an edge case example, but I guess it bugs me.
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