Hi All, As we know OSM id for nodes exceeded long time ago 2^32 and keep growing on the other hand the ids itself are pretty useless because they don't represent history good enough and also they couldn't implement principle of Permanent ID (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Permanent_ID).
I suggest to discuss geometrical value of OSM id per node. Of course there is ongoing discussion to attach OSM nodes to ways, so the number of nodes will decrease dramatically but that's a long-mid term strategy. Much easier is to give some value to OSM ID. PROPOSAL. Dedicate 30 bits of OSM ids to the quadrant of the Globe (per square radiant) i.e. last *30 bits *of the ID could represent *15th zoom of globe radiant tile *(not Mercatoor projection tiles). What's useful. 1. Programs to import OSM could process it much faster cause id in the ways could indicate where physically the way is located. 2. Programs that store IDs could store much more compressed i.e. OsmAnd maps could benefit for storing maps in QuadTile structure and keep only part of id attached to QuadTile 3. It is a step forward to compress the data and have formats for faster processing and better storage. 4. Probably something more? Why it is easy to implement. - Doesn't require to change anything in the schema and in the tools - Most likely doesn't require to change any editor cause the changes could be postprocessed by the changeset commiter. - *Backward compatible!* Old ids before the given number could stay the same for a while. Challenges / Objections. - If you move a node from its original tile the history will be lost and id will be changed (I doubt it is a strong objection cause information could be partially / visually restored from changeset history). - The uploading changeset from editor could differ from result changeset stored in OSM API. What do you think? Best Regards, Victor
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