[OSM-newbies] Separating streets that don't join

[Paul Johnson]

David ``Smith'' wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Randy <rwtnospam-newsgp at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> By the way JOSM, at least, will be much happier if you change all those
>> street abbreviations (Ln, Dr, etc.) to full words.
>
> I have my own (probably unpopular) opinion on that, see link below.
> But why does JOSM care?  Shouldn't editors just treat names as any
> string and leave them alone?

JOSM does, it marks it as an "informational" level problem, and for good
reason.  Anything that can be abbreviated can be abbreviated by the
renderer as appropriate.  Abbreviations cannot be so easily expanded: 
"Northeast Mount Saint Helens Street" versus "NE Mt. St. Helens St." is
hopefully a sufficiently obvious example.  It's not "New England
Mountain Street Helens Street..."  Seaching for abbreviations is
similarly easy.  Entering "Northeast" could also search for "NE", for
example.

> For my detailed reasoning on keeping abbreviations in the name tag,
> see: <http://vidthekid.info/misc/osm-abbr.html>.  Note, I'm currently
> considering alternate views and I may propose a compromise in the
> future.

Note that the Postal Service only permits abbreviations as a
convenience, and prefers that addresses are written uppercase-only in a
humanist font (block letters), with no abbreviations other than the two
letter state, though deliveries will still be made with as little as the
house number, street name and the full nine-digit zip (note: zip codes
haven't been five digits I was an infant; similarly phone numbers
haven't been 7 digits since I was in high school).