J.D. Schmidt schrieb:
>> TAGGING as laid out in the wiki are all rules for content but as yet they do
>> not provide a consistent USABLE base once one moves away from the basic road
>> stuff. And even the base road stuff people are trying to change the rules!
>
> Correction: Tagging as laid out in the wiki is NOT rules for content IN
> THE DB. Let me just repeat that: Tagging as laid out on the wiki in the
> "Mapfeatures" page is NOT rules governing the content in the DB.
>
>
> They are recommendations, to be used if you'd like to see your content
> rendered by the current default rendering engines used on the OSM site.
> Nothing more, nothing less.
True.
I don't understand why it's so fashionable on this list to play down the
importance of "Map features". Without that page all those 80GB of
cryptic XML would be pretty useless. But that's nothing bad or something
we should encounter, that just the nature of any map, whether it's
stored in a DB or printed on colorful paper.
A map is an abstract description of the landscape, that's what makes it
different from an aerial or plat. Someone making that description uses
certain symbols or certain code for certain features. Someone who uses
that description needs to know what every symbol/code resembles. On a
paper map that's done by the map keys which tell you whether those blue
lines are motorways, railways or maybe rivers, for OSM-data "Map
features" tell you.
Anybody can enter anything into the DB, we can't change that, we don't
want to change that and we are all aware of that. But when I (and most
other mappers as well) enter something in the DB I want other people to
know what it stands for in reality. I could use some crude tags only I
know, but what's then the point in making it accessible for the whole world.
And things like the cycle map would definitely not exist without some
kind of explanation of the relevant tage in the wiki. Without this
translation/documentation ("ncn=xyz means this way is part of a route
that...") there wouldn't be all those tags in the DB. I'm sure Andy
didn't think, well today I'm gonna render abc=xyz, maybe there are some
mappers who describe their cycleroutes just that way.
Without "Map features" OSM is like an undocumented command-line
programm: To be certain about all it's capabilities you'd need to read
every single line of code. And reading planet.osm might take a while...
regards, Sven
_______________________________________________
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
