[OSM-dev] Machine-readable list of map features?

[Etric Celine]

> IMHO parsing a Wiki is not a very good idea, sooner or later it will fail
> or become even harder as many accepted features are no more on the map
> feature page.

Yes. As soon as someone start to screw around with all the Key / Value 
templates I created for this the Tagwatch parsing part will fail.
The "Map_Feature" part is no problem. The Tagwatch script does not rely on 
this page, because it is already out of sync. The script use the categories 
with all Keys and Tags and parse the singe pages. This ensures that as soon as 
someone adds a description to his Key (approved or not, as the funny voting 
process should not decide about such a list) the Tagwatch script knows about 
it.

> The first version could be auto generated, but the next step would imho be
> to maintain it as a separated file (or db).
>
> We could dream of conversion to mapnik style files,
> josm/osm2go/potlatch/... online presets, error checkers, tagwatch tool, ...

I've started such a tool in my summer break but decided against it. The 
problem with such a separated database is that someone has to maintain it. 
This might end with a few peoples try to decide what tags should be used and 
what not. This is far away from what "many of us" stand for.

That's the reason parsing the Wiki is the better choice. This way everyone can 
add the description to his Tagging and others will know about it.