[Potlatch-dev] Suggestion for "lifecycle" tag - comments?

[Andy Allan]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 9:41 AM, Andy Allan <gravitystorm at gmail.com> wrote:
>> My first thought is to just have another couple of highway types ( a
>> proposed highway and a highway under construction ) with a list of
>> classifications in a choice input, and maybe some date inputs for when
>> they are opening and so on.
>
> My feeling is that "proposed" is really not a type of highway, and
> that eventually this tagging scheme will be replaced by something a
> little less idiosyncratic:
>
> highway=tertiary
> lifecycle=proposed

No, it won't, for reasons already explained by Nop. Moreover the
current system has the distinct advantage that it can be used to
describe what's on the ground - a stroke of a pen on a planner's chart
isn't a slight variant of a secondary road, it's something else
entirely ( a proposal ) and hence is a separate high-level concept.
Similarly, if you stumble across a strip of gravel surrounded by men
with shovels you can be pretty sure it's a road under construction,
but you would need further investigation to tell what kind of road it
might at some point become in the future.

I think the tagging scheme isn't idiosyncratic but is actually well
thought through, but even without giving a fig about tagging I don't
want to see proposed/construction/actually-exists as a property on all
the roads within p2.

> Ok, first, I don't think the UI would be different either way. All the
> code would be happening behind the scenes, to make a simple UI: simply
> an extra dropdown on a "misc" tab or something.

Which is actually a different thing. What I'm suggesting is that
proposed and construction would be two more icons on the grid of road
types, whereas you are suggesting the "lifecycle" should be a dropdown
on every single one of the hundreds of thousands of normal roads.

> Not to mention you'd need to duplicate all the road types for every
> life cycle stage. You'd also need to add "proposed railway", "proposed
> cycleway", "proposed foothpath", "proposed track", "proposed
> bridleway", "proposed building", etc etc (and repeat for construction
> etc). Pretty messy, no?

Pretty unnecessary, imo. I think you're misunderstanding the current
purpose of the "simple" tab - providing a simple UI for the majority
of the mapping. Proposed buildings is pretty niche, and should be
incorporated in a way becoming of its niche-ness. Adding dropdowns
over every object for such a rare occurrence is the "messy" way.

Cheers,
Andy