On Friday 09 May 2008 11:27:21 elvin ibbotson wrote: > Much debate centres around the way features are tagged and how they > are rendered (for example recent discussion of golf course tagging, > the term 'highway', rendering power lines,...) and it seems that much > of this is inextricably involved with the OSM data itself. I > wondered if it was time, while OSM is still relatively young and > before it becomes too ossified and institutionalised, for the > approach to be reviewed. > > My own thoughts, for what they are worth, are that the data structure > should be language/locale agnostic. For example, ways could have a > numeric type field with, hypothetically, 10-19 being used for roads. > In this scenario 11 might be a UK motorway, an Italian autostrada or > an American interstate, while 19 might be a rough track (10 being > reserved for some not-yet-invented super highway, after all some of > us were here before motorways). > > The editors used to input data (Potlatch, JOSM, whatever) would hide > this structured data from the user and translate it to/from human > language. One immediate advantage is that a German user could tag an > autobahn rather than a motorway and global users would not have to > use language clearly derived from the British motorway/trunk road/A/B > (and little-known C) road classification system. Instead, local > nomenclature would be mapped (no pun intended) to the underlying data > structure by the local edition of the editor. Highways are an obvious > example we are all familiar with, but the principle would apply to > all feature types. Places of worship could be mapped as cathedrals, > churches, chapels, etc in Britain or as mosques, temples, shrines, > whatever in the east.
Problem you are trying to solve: Discussion about tag names Proposed solution: Make tags numerical and have translations from numbers to names for multiple languages. Probable effect: The same discussion about the translations as before about the tag names, but now multiplied by the number of supported languages. -- m.v.g., Cartinus _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
