Colin Smale wrote: > > It's still the same road, even in the face of variations in the > spelling. I can't for the life of me think of a reason for worrying > about whether it's Pkwy or Parkway, as both are easily understood to be > equivalent. There will only be one official spelling (cf. your plat > example) which, if it differs from the evidence on the ground, should go > in "official_name". The key criterion (IMHO) is whether the name shown > on renderings based on OSM data is useful. Anyone following a satnav's > directions onto "Orlando Parkway" is not going to decide to ignore a > sign saying "Orlando Pkwy" on the grounds that it is probably a > different street and carry on scouring the area for a sign that says > "Orlando Parkway". > My point is that following what's on signs for the sake of deciding whether to abbreviate is not a good idea. Because signs are so inconsistent, we need a more general policy of what to abbreviate. Our current policy is to expand all prefixes and suffixes, and maybe to expand all abbreviations within the base name; the latter is what's mostly being discussed here.
Colin Smale wrote: > > In the case where a street has different spellings on the sign at the > two ends, where's the boundary? You can't tell, because there isn't one. > It's the same street. Pick a spelling, and stick to it. Many renderers > (e.g. mkgmap+Garmin nav) will be relying on the spelling being > consistent from end to end. If the street name changes in the course of > the street, even by one letter, it can be considered a "different > street" leading to extraneous directions. To me, consistency is more > important than 100% accuracy as judged against soft criteria. > Don't tag for the satnav :) But seriously, this is a problem with the software, since it will do the same thing where e.g. West Colonial Drive becomes East Colonial Drive, or where Kaley Avenue becomes Kaley Street (real example; it was originally Avenue all the way, but when Orlando annexed part of the road they changed it to Street because they have a strict policy of Avenues being north-south and Streets east-west: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=28.51859&lon=-81.38232&zoom=16&layers=M). -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/shortened-names-tp6556816p6630064.html Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk