[OSM-dev] way 7062297, is this new?

[Hugh Barnes]

On Thursday 09 October 2008 16:06:39 Andy Allan wrote:

(I think Grant said this bit, it's lost its context)
> >> Allowed via the 0.5 API currently: Yes.
> >> Supported by any of the editors: No (AFAIK)
> >>

I could swear I explicitly read endorsement of duplicate keys on the 
documentation somewhere, but as usal I've lost it ;~)

Spurred on by this, I tried it in Merkaartor. The UI accepted my input and I 
assumed all was good. I just remembered to follow this up and it appears the 
data didn't make it. Possibly the last occurrence of the tag in the app was 
the one that got submitted.

I don't think last time I tried Potlatch the interface would let me do it at 
all.

> >> On a hunch, don't expect the 0.6 API to support duplicates.
> >

> Until duplicate keys are prohibited by the API (as Grant
> suggests, likely in 0.6), then your system will just need to cope.
>

Can we talk about why they should be banned? It's a perfectly valid metadata 
construct to have multiple values for a property (key) for a single object.

Alright, you want examples?

1) The one I mentioned above is a main street and also a highway. I has two 
names. (Don't ask me what the renderers do with that, it's not the issue.) 
Someone has told me that maybe there's a tag for local or other alternate 
names. I still think it's possible to have two names.

2) I'm listing lots of a) features and b) routes served on bus stops. So I 
might say that the bus stop has, for simplicity, feature=bin and 
feature=seat. I might say it serves route=123 and route=456. I think someone 
will suggest I delimit my values. I could do that, but we should be producing 
XML that is easy to use with DOM or XPath alone. Using delimiters adds extra 
parsing work on top. Why do you want that in an API?

3) I'm sure there are others. There's always others. The world is complex.

Cheers