[Geocoding] Agenda

[David Earl]

Brian Quinion wrote:
>> ... UK is not a good test case...
> 
> The code handles the obvious variants, streets, saints, etc.
> Undoubtedly there are some that I've missed and the current list would
> need to be extended.  

What about the non-British stuff, like Sankt and the equivalence of 
german β and ss or ϋ and ue or danish Å and Aa for example? Or the way 
in which sometimes people write Potsdammerplatz and others Potsdammer 
Platz (though maybe your algorithm isn't as sensitive to word units as 
mine is). Can you fdeal with user searches for "Potsdammerplatz" when 
the database has "Potsdammerpl" & vv?

Do you deal with object types as well? For example, if a cinema is 
tagged "name=Odeon" will "Odeon cinema" give you a hit, or "cinemas near 
Chelsea"?

> Some of the examples Ed Freyfogle gave are
> possibly beyond what could reasonably be parsed, although it is always
> fun to try.

Indeed. (Though ironically the worst one I thought - the txtspk one, 
what was it, 2ton for Twoton or some such - would be almost trivial to 
do in Namefinder!).

Sometimkes the biggest issue is thinking what might happen. A recent 
request I had was very reasonably for "somewhere railway station" to 
match rather than "somewhere station" (and that of course leads to 
"somewhere train station" and "somewhere rail station" too).

>> Does it deal with updates as well as reloads (which are clearly impractical
>> as a frequent solution)?
> 
> This is the big 'todo' item, although osm2psql includes a framework
> for doing this that means that a lot of the work has already been
> done.  My intention was to try and get something out for people to
> test and then start work on this.

I don't know about your algorithm, but mine is focussed around names, 
and because people move objects, split ways, delete objects a change can 
result in a name not present in the update becoming "visible" to the 
search if a similarly named object is deleted. Deleting a way doesn't 
necessarily mean that street disappears from the search.

David