<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV>Hi Mike,</DIV><DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BR> From the perspective of a contributor and editor of OSM data rather than technical, I'd certainly endorse storing coastline data separately. Currently, it takes forever to get the data uploaded in the first place, greatly slows down downloads of an editing area of interest when I have no interest in editting the coastline, and when I am editting it is extremely fiddly and user-error causing when it crosses other data.<BR><BR> I'd see the advantages as:<BR><BR> <X-TAB> </X-TAB>- Gives ability to store more than one coastline set<BR><BR> <X-TAB> </X-TAB>- To be able to retrieve it as a separate layer would make coastline maintenance much easier.<BR><BR> <X-TAB> </X-TAB>- Makes general editting easier<BR><BR> <X-TAB> </X-TAB>- Protects it from mistakes when doing general editting, which will become important if we encourage "drive by" editing of our data by the general public.<BR><BR> <X-TAB> </X-TAB>- A good test bed for determining whether general separation is a good thing (political boundaries, bus routes, specialist POI sets, ...) and for enhancing edit and rendering tools to cope.<BR><BR> <BR> Mike<BR><BR> <BR></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV>Good points. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>Artem Pavlenko</DIV><DIV><A href="http://mapnik.org">http://mapnik.org</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>