[OSM-newbies] avoid repeating the name tag twice

[Renaud MICHEL]

Le lundi 09 mars 2009 à 21:29, G H S a écrit :
> Interesting idea, but how would changing the content of the name tag to
> something like the above be better than getting rid of it completely?
>  Wouldn't that still break existing apps?  If so, you might as well get
> rid of it and go with the "local=" idea.

You could have some pre-processing done at the database level and have the 
$(key) syntax accepted for each and every tag.
You would then have two different ways of querying the data:

In edit mode (used by JOSM, potlatch, ...) the server gives you the actual 
stored value, like
name=$(name:fr)
name:fr="French Here"
name:en="English Here"

In rendering mode (every other use case which won't modify the data) the 
werver actually replace the values, so you get
name="French Here"
name:fr="French Here"
name:en="English Here"

(you might want here to refuse recursive replaces, to avoid some infinite 
loop)

This way you get a generic tag values re-use feature which is transparent 
for data consumers and only need a small modification of API and editors 
(to query for edit mode).

-- 
Renaud Michel