[OSM-dev] likenesses

[David Earl]

On 01/10/2009 12:54, John Smith wrote:
 > 2009/10/1 David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com>:
 >> On 01/10/2009 03:25, SteveC wrote:
 >>> I want to revive a very old idea - tag equivalences.
 >> I would like to go further than Steve proposes, but I understand it is a
 >> hard sell to the anarchist wing of OSM while being welcome to the
 >> conformist wing. But I really think what I outline below treads a middle
 >> way. I'm absolutely not proposing to restrict anyone's freedom to add
 >> new tags or values.
 >
 > I don't see what your persauation has to do with anything,

I was only heading off the inevitable "people should be absolutely free 
to do anything they want" type comments that have always been among the 
responses to suggestions like this.

 > I'm looking
 > at this from a practical point of view, it's easier to do translations
 > in the editor and then have the editor do the processing into a
 > pre-defined set of tags, rather than having 1000s of servers doing the
 > translations every time they have to parse the data, that's crazy and
 > complete waste of CPU time.

I think you missed the point (and also I was just responding to Steve's 
original message). In my suggestion the translation is done once and 
stored with the tag definition. The editor simply reads and presents it. 
Currently every editor has to have its own translation, and chances are 
also that they will be different. They can also offer common translated 
help beyond just the word that is used for the tag, and everyone gets 
updated when that changes.

Keeping multiple, probably different, descriptions and translations 
across all the programs that use OSM is the thing that seems crazy to me.

David