[OSM-newbies] New or existing relation?

[SomeoneElse]

Bob Hawkins wrote:
> I understand that the Relations list in JOSM shows all relations 
> pertaining to the the downloaded OSM data.  I wish to add a 
> relation to a section of long distance path that I have plotted.  If 
> such a relation does not exist within the bounding box of 
> the downloaded data, do I create a new relation?  Should I 
> know whether such a relation occurs elsewhere and what its attributes 
> are so that I compile my relation to match?  If so, how do I find that 
> relation?  I find such issues regarding relations quite confusing and 
> would welcome some constructive comments. 
Personally, if a relation already exists for part of the same path, I'd 
use that rather than creating another similar one.  I'm guessing by your 
email address that you might be in the UK, in which case the tables in 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_Kingdom_Long_Distance_Paths 
might be useful.  The "a" (analyse) links against the route relations 
allow you to easily see whether something with a similar name is the 
same thing or not.

I'm not a JOSM user (there may be a way of doing the same thing there) 
but Potlatch's "find a relation containing" seems undaunted by distance 
- you could use that to get the relation number and then use that in 
JOSM I guess.