There are two fundamental questions (to me) in this issue which have not been explicitly asked or answered, either on the list or the wiki:
- Will the "addr:street" tag on the address node or way have the exact same value as the "name" tag on the street way? - Are you proposing to remove directional prefixes and suffixes from the "addr:street" and "name" tags, or leave it with the fully-qualified complete value? I will start by saying that, to the first question, any proposal to put different values on "addr:street" on address nodes and "name" on the road is just plain stupid. That will make no end of trouble in trying to do anything useful like routing. So for this proposal, the stance should be state clearly. To the second question: I absolutely, fundamentally disagree that these prefixes and suffixes should be removed from the "name" and "addr:street" tags. Doing so is exactly what WILL make the names ambiguous. The name and addr:street tags should be full and complete with all prefixes, suffixes, and qualifiers. But the name and addr:street needs to be COMPLETE, since it is the universal lowest common denominator. The proposal to redefine the "name" tag as something less than the complete full name is not new. Kevin Atkinson has been redefining the name tag by removing prefixes from street names all over Salt Lake City for a while now. I'm really not understanding the arguments about naming ambiguity. I looked at Hickory NC. Two streets named "10th Street Place Northwest" and "10th Street Drive Northwest" are clearly different. What is ambiguous there? Four streets named either "10th" or "10th Street" with other tags to differentiate them will DEFINITELY be ambiguous. I think it is a great idea to add additional tags to specify prefixes, suffixes, or base names. I personally would like to see those added (or left/converted from Tiger tags). It would be great to see mkgmap enhanced to optimize prefixes and suffixes, for example. HOWEVER, having said all of this, I think the basic proposal for these address tags is just a bad idea. Let me explain why. All of the values for the street name components, on every address node, should be the same for all address nodes on the street. That could be dozens or hundreds for every single street in the country. Why duplicate these tags on every address node? You can GUARANTEE that the nodes will not be consistent; some users will maintain them one way, and some will maintain them another. A better way to do all of this is to have all of these new supplemental tags on the street way, and simply have the addr:street tag use the same value as the "name" tag on the street way. Or, use the associatedStreet relation. I know the hope is that some yet-to-be conjured tools will encourage or enforce the consistency across all the address nodes on a street. Such yet-to-be-created tool could just as well ensure that the values go with a proper street way, or an associatedStreet relation. Please, Please, PLEASE do not change or redefine the "name" and "addr:street" tags. They aren't overloaded, they are COMPLETE and UNAMBIGUOUS. Add whatever tags in addition you want. If you really want to add a million new tags on address nodes everywhere, I won't stop anyone, but I think it is redundancy that would be better handled on the street way. - Alan _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
