[OSM-newbies] What's the easiest method to "snap" an area boundary to adjacent ways?

[Samat K Jain]

On Saturday, August 28, 2010 11:46:33 am Pieren wrote:
> Not true. There is no consensus on that. Each method as pros and cons which
> have been developed many times on the talk list.

Thanks for pointing that out—AFAIK, I've not actually seen discussion of this 
on the mailing list or wiki so it follows there hasn't been any consensus. 
However, many areas *are* mapped this way on OSM.

> > Why? Well, after you've created such a thing… try to select and edit it.
> > Yeah,
> > it's a pain. No editors make it easy (though I've found Potlatch makes
> > the most easy).
> 
> But if you have two parallel ways not sharing nodes, it's also painful to
> adjust them when the topology is adjusted (say the boundary is following
> the road which was traced on bad GPS trace) because you have to select
> pairs of nodes.

Not sure whether you were replying to me about editors… but IMHO this 
situation is hypothetical: you shouldn't be adding areas (e.g. residential 
zones, commerial zones, etc) if the roads topology wasn't correct in the first 
place.

> > (2) Create a relation, making the way a component.
> > 
> > Regarding the philosophical viewpoint above, this makes a way part of a
> > boundary, which I believe is legally true in certain situations. E.g. the
> > middle of a road may actually mark two different counties/states/etc.
> > Using a
> > relation is probably preferred but much more work.
> 
> But some shared lines are very small on which case you have to split it
> just to add a small piece to a relation. In such case, it's easier to
> share the same nodes.

See my point about making things difficult to edit.

> > it still makes editing
> > difficult.
> 
> Editing is not difficult on JOSM if you know how to use it. But it's true
> for potlatch.

I misphrased what I said, but the rationale is that it's easy to make changes 
that will break complex/large boundary relations (e.g. a country), that 
apparently no one frequently checks.

-- 
Samat K Jain <http://samat.org/> | GPG: 0x4A456FBA

In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the 
universe.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos (308)