[OSM-dev] [Fwd: Re: Chopped of ways. New flag for OSM XML?]

[Karl Newman]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 7:28 AM, Rogier Wolff <R.E.Wolff at bitwizard.nl>wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 07:04:11AM -0700, Karl Newman wrote:
> > The suggestion was to mark the version of the entity as negative. The
> > version attribute does not yet exist but is proposed for the upcoming 0.6
> > API. Making it negative would prevent it from being uploaded because the
> > server would reject it. The intent for the version attribute is to avoid
> > simultaneous editing of the same object.
>
> I've been on this list for a few days now, so I might be
> rambling. Feel free to ignore my advice.
>
> Making some parameter negative to mean "this object is incomplete"
> sounds like a hack to me. It's something that you might do in an
> internal database, or in an in-memory datastructure, but it should not
> be in an API. Not ever. It's a cludge.
>

I was thinking more of the general case--"this object should not be uploaded
because it's been manipulated in some way that invalidates the data".
Setting the version of an entity as negative would easily prevent that,
using the (proposed) server api. This "hack" is intended for offline files,
not the main API.


> If you add cludges to your datastructures and APIs you'll end up with
> a big mess that in the future will become hard to maintain. The
> current structure with XML APIs and transfer methods sounds like a
> well thought-out system. Things can be done more efficient, but for
> the sake of readability everything is in ascii.
>

Well, UTF-8, but okay...


>
> That's nice. Cludges don't belong here.
>
> I had sent the mail that this discussion came out of as private
> EMail. That was intentional: I don't consider myself to be
> knowledgable enough about the subject matter to give accurate public
> advice in this matter. This is evidenced by the fact that I don't have
> the terminology down enough to have noticed the difference between
> version numbers and node IDs... So, again, feel free to tell me that I
> don't know enough yet to comment, and I'll shut up. :-)
>
>        Roger.
>

Hmm...  According to my mail client (gmail), you sent it to me, Brett H and
the dev list. If you do want to have a private conversation, please indicate
it in the message (i.e., "Please don't respond to the list") otherwise I'll
bring conversations back on to the list for any relevant discussions.
Anyway, I won't tell you to shut up; it's good to have discussion--it's why
the lists exist. I see your point, but I don't think it's a terrible hack. I
thought it was sort of an elegant solution, really.

Karl
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