On 09/11/2008 12:32, Gerald A wrote: > Renderers should be following the project. If the community decides one > tag over the other, or both, or even neither, the renders will catch up > eventually.
That may be indeed what many people would say, but in the absence of any standardisation of tags and the vehement opinion of many that there explicitly *shouldn't* be any standardisation of tags, the renderers will continue to yield the power and the effective decision making. If it weren't that all our renderers map highway=motorway, I rather think we'd see highway=freeway, autobahn, autostrade, autoroute, ... in widespread use. Many would defend the right to do precisely that, and the only reason it doesn't happen currently is because the renderers don't do anything with them. Perhaps they should. In any case "the community" hasn't decided - clearly highway=gate is the still the preferred option as few poeple have seen any overwhelming advantage (such as gates disappearing from the renderer for example) to update their areas. In practice, I'm sure it is an iterative process involving emerging consensus rather that anyone deciding one way or another. But the pragmatist and perfectionist camps are both quite strident in their view. Me, I'll just go with the flow, though I still think the words used for tags are pretty much irrelevant and that abstracting away from what is actually stored, e.g. for translation and cultural purposes would be good. David. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk