[josm-dev] Relation editor support for north/south and east/west similar to forward/backward

[Ian Dees]

On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 3:51 PM, Florian Lohoff <f at zz.de> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 12:30:25PM -0700, Martijn van Exel wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm new to this list so please bear with me.
> > The relation editor currently only parses 'forward' and 'backward'
> > roles when considering the visual representation in the rightmost
> > column. In the United States, north/south and east/west are very
> > common as member roles for road routes, because that is how they are
> > officially signposted.
>
> I would be very careful in using this. Is this really "south" e.g.
> 180° ? Or is it more like 99° ? Or 269° ?
>
> Most streets are not strictly on the 90° raster and signposts are
> only rough directions.
>
> Addings this to OSM might make it much more difficult for Data Consumers
> to process and interpret data.


No, these aren't compass directions. They're the directionality of the
road. For example, this way is part of the I-94 interstate going west, but
a compass in a car driving on it would tell the viewer they were pointing
north:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/39372612