[OSM-newbies] Rendered two ways; why?

[Steve Dobson]

HI James

On 14/06/10 00:55, James Ewen wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Steve Dobson<steve at dobbo.org>  wrote:
>
>> In contrast it took me quite a while to spot the "One Way" sign of North
>> America.  White lettering on a black background is just not part our
>> European road signs so I just don't see them and have turned the wrong
>> way into a one way street.
>
> So from the above, we can deduce that the standard "One Way" sign in
> the UK does not match the North American "One Way" signage.

Correct.

>> Surely what is needed is a way of internationalising the symbology in
>> OSM (and JOSM, ...).  I would like to see the symbols that I am already
>> familiar and I expect that others would too.
>
> I would like to see familiar signage as well... but my familiar
> signage doesn't look like yours.

My point in a nutshell.

> Okay, how are we going to internationalize the symbology, yet still
> have it match the symbols that you are familiar with?

<snip>

> This is one of the issues that is a serious point of contention with
> an international project like OSM. How do you create a universal set
> of signage that everyone in the world understands, and agrees upon?
> There was a fairly intense discourse recently about the icon to use to
> denote a graveyard, since the icon chosen was associated with a
> specific religion.
>
> I would guess that we will be able to come up with a common set of
> signage, language, theology and ideology one day... not sure when
> though.

I would council against a single common OSM set of signs.  Which ones do 
we go with?  North American?  European?  India?  Chinese?  Which ever 
one we go with there will be more people that are not familiar with the 
symbology.

Surly the best method would be to use a look-up table.  Each user could 
then pick the signs that they want.  Why shouldn't a Yankee mapping in 
Holland have signs that she is familiar with?   OSM could default based 
on the browsers' language settings, but allow customisation on the 
user's preference page.

With jOSM (Java) it is even simpler as the java.util.ResourceBundle 
class allows object to be returned not just text, and most programming 
languages have internationalisation methods that could be used I'm sure.

Steve