(forgot to copy to talk) On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com> wrote: > Martijn van Exel <m <at> rtijn.org> writes: > >>> This is just an example, but you will have these assumptions for most >>> of the tags: for the local mapper they are included, but on a global >>> basis they won't be valid. The meaning of a tag is somehow always >>> dependent on the cultural background / area. >> >>Yes, that is exactly where a semantic layer would come in! For >>example, I would tag a feature in a semantics-enabled JOSM in my >>native language, Dutch, as "provinciale weg". A lookup in the ontology >>would expose an ambiguity: a provincial road could be highway=primary >>or highway=secondary, depending on the road number. Human >>disambiguation would be required, the attributes of the semantic >>relation between 'NL:provinciale weg' and 'highway=primary' and >>'highway=secondary' could provide a clue to do this. > > So you're saying that if some extra layer existed, you would be able to > add data to the map using natural language rather than following a tagging > scheme? Or do you mean that different language communities would have their > own tagging schemes, with special values derived from their language (just > as current OSM tagging is derived from English), and an intermediate layer > would translate it?
The latter. The user would be able to tag a feature with "chemist", "pharmacy", "farmacia or "apotheek" and that would result in the same coding in the OSM database (currently: shop=chemist). When consuming OSM data, the process could be reversed; based on the locale, a feature tagged "shop=chemist" could (would) be output as being one of these culturally determined Things. Note that a "chemist", a "pharmacy", a "farmacia" and an "apotheek" are names for something that is similar across cultures and languages, but not literally the same. > Or maybe I have got the wrong end of the stick and the important issue is not > natural language but different classifications between countries, so that > the concept of a 'provincial road' exists in the Netherlands but is not an > official road classification elsewhere. In that case, it would make most > sense even for Dutch-speaking users to tag it as highway=provincial_way > or another English-like tag scheme, to keep things consistent. The idea is to *avoid* having different classifications on the database level, even though one concept could be represented by two different names in one language (consider freeway / highway). Any ambiguity arising from that would have to be handled by additional attributes. Martijn van Exel +++...@rtijn.org laziness – impatience – hubris http://schaaltreinen.nl | http://martijnvanexel.nl | http://oegeo.wordpress.com/ twitter / skype: mvexel flickr: rhodes _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
