[OSM-dev] Restrict key names on order to retain reusability of OSM

[Richard Fairhurst]

Stefan Keller wrote:

> BTW: Restrincting tags in del.icio.us to ASCII did not restrain the success
> of social bookmarking in any way IMHO.

And allowing \W tags in OSM has not restrained the success of Mapnik,  
Osmarender, the cycle map, the Garmin .img files, Kosmos, or any of  
the other wonderful things that people are doing, right now, with OSM  
data.

If GML is sufficiently braindead that it can't cope with anything  
beyond the charset of a Sinclair Spectrum*, the converter should have  
an escaping function. Like Andy says, constraining OSM for this one  
particular use - and it is just one use, none of the others above are  
affected by it - is mad.

I could equally say that Actionscript doesn't like colons in keys  
(which it doesn't), so colons should be banned. After all, there are  
many many more people using Actionscript on OSM data (via Potlatch)  
than there are GML. Instead I wrote about three lines of code to  
escape them. I recommend it. :)

cheers
Richard

* Actually, I'm misrepresenting the Spectrum. It had some very handy  
block-graphic characters at 128+. Mr Westcott, are you there?