[OSM-newbies] Two Questions

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 18:39, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> amenity=recycling;waste_basket) [...]
>
> Is this semicolon separation standardized? I've seen it on a few tags,
> but don't recall seeing it explicitly mentioned anywhere.

When we still had the 0.5 API you could add multiple equivalent keys
with distinct values, e.g.:

    amenity=recycling
    amenity=waste_basket

Then when 0.6 came around that was taken away, so we're now left with:

    amenity=recycling;waste_basket

or:

    amenity:recycling=yes
    amenity:waste_basket=yes

Or numerous other alternatives.

Using ";" to separate them seems to be the recommended thing to do
these days. However as far as I know none of the big consumers of our
data (mapnik/osmarender/mkgmap/...) support it since they all look for
exactly matching key-value pairs.

As a consequence I've taken to creating duplicate nodes (exactly the
same lat/lon) with different tags when I need to map something like
this. It's easy to merge later and is supported now by everyone.