<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">This discussion about the national status of England, Scotland, Wales and Ulster is very entertaining but is not going to reach a conclusion without another war. Personally I would give these countries the same status as states as they are effectively states within the United Kingdom or (with the exception of Ulster) Great Britain.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">This strand of the discussion (below) though echoes the earlier thread I kicked off (but gave up pursuing because there seemed to be more prejudice than logic in the discussion) about the idea of numerically-based properties in the database mapped to human-friendly language in editors and viewers. Most of that discussion was about highways but similar arguments seem to apply to boundaries. I think most British mappers would be happier selecting from a boundary sub-menu of 'National', 'County', 'District', 'parish', with each choice invisibly mapped back to the appropriate numerical boundary type than with the clumsy 'boundary=administrative' 'admin_level=4' approach. In other countries/languages, other words would map to the same numbers.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">But isn't this democratic/anarchic approach to mapping great? I'm going to put a national/state level boundary around our village and name it Isle of Man, resulting in some worthwhile reductions in taxes and a free grandstand seat for the TT races next month :-)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans'; font-weight: normal; ">elvin ibbotson</span></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><b><br></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><b><br></b></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>From: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Shaun McDonald <<a href="mailto:shaun@shaunmcdonald.me.uk">shaun@shaunmcdonald.me.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">29 May 2008 13:43:43 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">Bruce Cowan <<a href="mailto:lists@bcowan.fastmail.co.uk">lists@bcowan.fastmail.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>Cc: </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] National borders in the British Islands</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 face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">On 29 May 2008, at 13:31, Bruce Cowan wrote:</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><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">Seriously, the number system for borders is rather strange, surely there</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">must be a more obvious scale. I suppose this has been mentioned before</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">though.</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 thought people are using things like district, country, city, town etc for the boundaries, rather than a numeric value.</font></div></div><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>