[OSM-dev] lua+osm2pgsql=?

[Richard Fairhurst]

One of the many wondrous things about OSRM is that you handle the speed 
impact of different tags (e.g. highway=motorway vs highway=unclassified) 
with plugins written in Lua, a fast but easy-to-understand scripting 
language.

Wouldn't it be great to have the same capability in osm2pgsql?

Think: path rendering. Right now, you have to potentially weigh up 
highway=, access=, bicycle/foot/horse/etc.=, designation, and surface= 
tags. That's a whole bunch of Mapnik rules (or whatever) - slow to 
write, slow to run. Remapping the tags on database import with osm2pgsql 
would fix this.

Adding this to osm2pgsql is way beyond my poor brane, I'm afraid, though 
I'd love to do it. But it would make a great GSoC project:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2013/Project_Ideas#Data_processing

or maybe someone might feel inspired to just code it. ;)

(Thanks to lonvia and Gnonthgol in #osm-dev for suggestions leading to 
this!)

cheers
Richard