As we probably never can agree on the semantics discussion we should redefine the syntax of the highway-tag from scratch. This will never happen since it's a pita-job to edit the existing data, but here we go:
1. Remove all highway=motorway, trunk, primary, etc. 2. Use highway=road. It's a road! If we can't agree on what is a road we're in trouble. 3. Use additional tags like motorway=yes, living_street=yes for roads with special status. Perhaps also trunk=yes (this is alreasy used in Sweden as stamväg=yes). 4. Use admin_level=1...10 or 1...20. (or whatever key name is best suited) You can argue until hell has experienced 666 freeze-thaw cycles wheater unclassified is higher, lower or equal than residential, but 4 is a higher classification than 5. Period. <spinal tap>But remember: 11 is always more than 10, right... ;) </spinal tap> Use the whole scale and omit levels so that countries with intermediate classifications will have a free number to use. One way of doing this it so use 1...100 and have 1, 10, 20, 30...100 as standards. If a country then has a road that lies between 40 and 50 then use 45. If if your area has two roads between 60 and 70 then use 63 and 66. (The freeways of US goes here (though in the 1...9 span) - from the little I've read there are users who wants to splice it up depending of different factors.) Large scale renderers (mapnik, osmarender, cycle map) can easily have the same rendering for 1...9, 10...19, 20...21 etc and local renderers can create special rules that suites their purpose. This key could also encompass the track_grade system, but admin_level might be a bad name for that. 5. A residential road would be a highway=road, abutters=residental or a highway=road passing through landuse=residential area. This allows for different grade residential roads. Eg. http://osm.org/go/0ex4n1HM?layers=B000TTF - Östra Kyrkogatan is a residential road (apartments with doors directly facing the street), but at the same time it's the main drive-through road of the area. 6. Make good use of availible road standard tags such as, but not limited to, lanes=*, maxspeed=*, surface=*, lit=* etc. And yes I know, highway=road is already in use. So add admin_level=unknown to them first then. (See the solutions - not the problems) Now, you are on the way of getting administrative grading (admin_level), quality grading (lanes, maxspeed, surface) and lovely beautiful maps without having to argue the purpose and size of a unclassified road. As always: grade what is - not as you wish it to render. Are you using highway=unclassified since it renders properly compared to residential, or because it fits the description of the highway-type. And finally - this is not a super-serious proposal. Just giving you something to think about. /Konrad _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
