[OSM-newbies] Tag to a multitude of polygons

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Roland Rothstein <ro_ro at gmx.de> wrote:
>>> I would like to tag the name "Forest of xxx" to an area, but the area
>>> consists of a multitude of polygons (e.g, decidious, mixed or
>>> coniferous
>>> forests, a lake etc.). I do not think it is correct to tag each of the
>>> polygons with that name. How can I proceed?
>
>> Add all the polygons to a relation which you then tag with the name of
>> the forest. See here:
>
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation
>
> What type of relation is most adequate? Multipolygon? And should the
> individual polygons all be role "outer"? Is there an example on the map?

Actually I'd just go for adding the same name to all those objects.
Unfortunately there's a lot of things with the same name in the
database currently but until we get something like name references
this is likely to be the case for the foreseeable future.

You could add some multipolygon to do this but as far as I know that's
supported by few (if any?) users of the data. It's probably not
supported by any renderer or routing application.