Hi, I have noticed intense discussion about changing how roads should be tagged. It seems that some people devised their own way how to apply different values for highway tag and now attempt to force this on everybody.
On the other hand some people are attempting to introduce new values for highway tag (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/residential_narrow and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/residential_narrow/old). Both approaches seem wrong. Changing how roads should be classified will break existing OSM data. Introducing new values will only add to confusion choosing road classification. It seems that both issues are caused by desire to achieve certain rendering in mapnik or TAH. I guess best way to solve such problems would be to render streets differently based on value of tag width. This would encourage use of tag width. This way we would also gain useful data that can be used by routing software. Another tag that is currently not supported by rendering engines is surface. I think renderers should make distinction between paved and unpaved roads. Otherwise you are risking that people will classify unpaved road as track just to achieve desired rendering effect. I am aware that highway=unsurfaced is rendered differently. But this value is supposed to be deprecated. Besides, unsurfaced roads can have different classifications (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway#Exceptions_to_physical_attributes). I also propose extending instructions for road classification to use width tag when road is narrow. Instructions should also suggest what is considered narrow. For instance less than 4 meters for residential and unclassified roads, less than 6 meters for tertiary roads, less than 8 meters for secondary and primary roads. For trunks and motorways this limit should probably apply to lane width. Proposed limits on when certain type of road is considered narrow should match rendering rules. Blaž _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
