[OSM-dev] Timestamp in PBF files

[marqqs at gmx.eu]

Hello!

At first I must apologize. It was _my_ fault that osmconvert stopped processing when fed with Frederik's new .osm.pbf files.

Of course the program may inform the user that there is a new feature in the data which is not recognized, but the program must not just terminate processing the data.

Fortunately this bug was easy to find and easy to fix (I had mistakingly written 80 instead of 0x80). osmconvert version 0.7H can process the new files now, however it does not parse the epoch based timestamp yet.

The string-formatted timestamp has been part of PBF documentation for quite a while now, and meanwhile there are lots of PBF files using this timestamp. Nevertheless we can change this standard again if there are real benefits in an alternative format. But I would appreciate it very much if you all discussed the standard, decided and _documented_ it before the whole bunch of software is going to be patched. :-)

In case you decide in benefit of the "seconds after epoch" solution, I certainly will change osmconvert as soon as possible to adhere to this standard.

Stephan, what did you mean we would need this "undefined" for? File timestamps? If yes, I think this isn't necessary. Protobuf is a very flexible format, if an object is not needed, you simply may omit it.

Regards
Markus