<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>I'm grouping a replies to several posts for this topic...</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>On 9 May 2008, at 19:13, Jeffrey Martin wrote:</div><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">Typos in real words are easier to detect than a mistake in entering a number.<br><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div></blockquote><br></div><div>In the scenario I was suggesting numbers would only replace words for type tags and users would never see the numbers but would just see words (in their own language) mapped to/from numbers in the database by the editor/viewer software. This somewhere between the ID numbers (set purely by software) and latitude/longitude (which users do not enter directly) and all the other tags, most of which (like name=) require user direct input.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>From: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"Jeffrey Martin" <<a href="mailto:dogshed@gmail.com">dogshed@gmail.com</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Date: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">9 May 2008 15:09:39 BDT</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"elvin ibbotson" <<a href="mailto:elvin.ibbotson@poco.org.uk">elvin.ibbotson@poco.org.uk</a>>, "OSM Talk" <<a href="mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org">talk@openstreetmap.org</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Subject: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><b>Re: [OSM-talk] tagging and rendering</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">The rendering should be separate from the data. Marking a hiking trail</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">as an autobahn so it will be a different color or be visible on higher</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">zoom levels I think we all agree is wrong.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">Provided the data is correct, I don't see a problem with altering the</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">way data is collected and recorded to make it easier for renderers,</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">and those who program them and write the rendering rules.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">----</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">I can see the attraction to the use of numbers for the values of the</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">highway tag. Having a new system that does not use terms that</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">have other meanings can force people to think about the OSM</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">definitions of the values. The UK centric terms have this effect</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">for me. I have to think about what motorway means for the US</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">or Korea in terms of the OSM definition because I have no competing</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">definition of the term motorway in my mind. For me motorway</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">only has an OSM definition.</font></div></div></blockquote></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><div><br></div><div>I have today tagged a little country lane in my area as a railway line as well as highway=unclassified, as the free-from tagging system would seem to allow this and I wanted to see how it will be rendered by Mapnik and Osmarender. I'm all for freedom but I think the type of a node or way is (like node ID and latitude/longitude) more fundamental than most tags which would retain user input and the potential to invent new tags.</div><div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>From: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Jonathan Bennett <<a href="mailto:openstreetmap@jonno.cix.co.uk">openstreetmap@jonno.cix.co.uk</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Date: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">9 May 2008 19:55:01 BDT</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><a href="mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org">talk@openstreetmap.org</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Subject: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><b>Re: [OSM-talk] tagging and rendering</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">elvin ibbotson wrote:</font></div> <br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">Things humans read need to be human readable. The database should be read by software and if it can be faster and more efficient using numbers, numbers are what should be used.</font></div> <br></blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">The best way of proving this would be to come up with your own version of the OSM server stack that used ID numbers internally, while still outputting human-readable tag names. How long do you think it would take you?</font></div></blockquote><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I don't think we want another server. I can already demonstrate it:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I am currently experimenting with binary data downloads for my mobile OSM viewer, <a href="http://mom.poco.org.uk/">mom</a>. I need data for scales from 3 (just coastlines and country boundaries for enormous areas) to scale 15 (almost everything in a limited area) and until there is a binary API the data has to be sourced as XML then parsed to binary. The standard OSM API does not have any level-of-detail filtering so I am using XAPI. To get data for a particular scale I have to make several calls to the XAPI for each feature group (natural, highway, waterway, ...) in turn, and each call takes quite a bit of setting up in the code. If, for example, the feature types were structured using a numerical system such that so that all natural features began with 0, all highways with 1, etc, but everything needed at scales smaller than 5 ended with numbers smaller than 3 (eg. coastlines: 01; trunk roads: 12) I could make a simple call for features less than *3.</div><div><br></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>From: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"Martijn van Oosterhout" <<a href="mailto:kleptog@gmail.com">kleptog@gmail.com</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Date: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">9 May 2008 19:51:18 BDT</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"Jeffrey Martin" <<a href="mailto:dogshed@gmail.com">dogshed@gmail.com</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Cc: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">OSM Talk <<a href="mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org">talk@openstreetmap.org</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Subject: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><b>Re: [OSM-talk] street traits</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 8:30 PM, Jeffrey Martin <<a href="mailto:dogshed@gmail.com">dogshed@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</font></div> <br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">A name for each kind of road in a person's country could be set up as an</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">editor feature. I select</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">"mountain road 2" from my list and it fills in the number of lanes, lane</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">size, shoulder size, etc.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">for me.</font></div> <br></blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">Strangly enough, JOSM supports this already.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div> <br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">Another option might be to have some kind of bot that fills in specific data</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">based on country</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">specific highway tags.</font></div> <br></blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">I thin you're missing something though. Just because it says</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">highway=motorway doesn't mean it looks identical everywhere. It means</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">what a motorway is in the country its located in. Just determine which</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">types of roads there are (there are about 7 usually, no matter what</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">the country) and then map those to the existing highway tags. All</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">done.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">If you want to add stuff like lanes/etc go ahead, but for the basics</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">you don't need it.</font></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div>A new thread but more evidence that feature type tagging is fundamental and may need rethinking. </div></div></div></div></body></html>