[OSM-newbies] building=yes on highway=pedestrian does not render?

[Richard Weait]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Pieren <pieren3 at gmail.com> wrote:
> A picture is better than a long text. Have a look at the Eiffel tower hiden
> by the pedestrian area underneath :
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.858424&lon=2.294024&zoom=18&layers=B000FTF

Unfortunate.

I have resolved my problem with highway=pedestrian, area=yes.  In my
case, Toronto City Hall buildings were hidden by Nathan Phillips
Square.  Creating a multipolygon relation for NPS, with the city hall
buildings as inner members worked after removing the old
highway=pedestrian from the outer way.  This works for me because the
buildings and NPS are mutually exclusive.

With your Eiffel Tower example, three different renderers are instructive.

Cyclemap: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.85842&lon=2.29402&zoom=17&layers=00B0FTF

Cyclemap appears not to render pedestrian areas. The
highway=pedestrian, area=yes appears only as an outline.  It appears
that Cyclemap draws highway=pedestrian after buildings, so the
pedestrian ways are shown on top of the tower.

It also appears that the Eiffel Tower was seen by the SRTM mission, as
there are elevation contours around the tower.  Neat.

osmarender: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.85842&lon=2.29402&zoom=17&layers=00B0FTF

Osmarender also does not draw pedestrian areas.  Osmarender either
draws buildings after highway=pedestrian, or honors building layers,
or both as the tower is shown over top of the pedestrian ways and over
the four pillars.

Or perhaps osmarender honors highway=pedestrian, layer=-1 and is
hiding the pedestrian area under the Champ de Mars leisure=park ?

Either way, highway=pedestrian, layer=-1 is incorrect, unless there is
a below-ground shopping mall or something.

Mapnik: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.858455&lon=2.294208&zoom=18&layers=B000FTF
This might be the one you are referring to when you edit.

Mapnik does render highway=pedestrian, area=yes.  But it draws this,
and all highways, after buildings, so half of the Eiffel Tower is
hidden.  The pedestrian ways have round stroke-ends that appear to be
playing nicely with the pedestrian area even though they are wrongly
on different layers.  This suggests that mapnik does not honor
pedestrian area layers.  Mapnik also appears to not honor building
layers.

Is there a paved pedestrian area under the tower, or is that area
mostly grass with some paved ways as shown on osmarender?  If so,
perhaps the pedestrian area is adding unnecessary complexity.

In your case the highway=pedestrian does exist underneath the
building.  Perhaps this is a case where we might ask for building
layers to be honored in the OSM mapnik style?