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

[Steve Bennett]

> 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

I disagree, but as this is a distraction from the actual discussion at
hand, I'll leave it.
> 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.

It's quite unfair to compare "two icons" against "hundreds of
thousands of normal roads". The fair comparison would be a minimum of
3 icons (road, rail, footpath/cycleway) against one dropdown box.

> 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.

Ok, proposed buildings are niche. Roads under construction aren't.
Maybe this is some philosophical difference we're going to need to
debate out, but I see covering these tags properly as "comprehensive",
"complete" and "thorough" - not "messy". Yes, the UI needs to be
designed in a way to maximise access to common tagging tasks - I've
even created tickets to that effect. But the trade-off you're
suggesting between "simplicity" and completeness is artificial, imho.

So here are three potential solutions:
1 put tags like this on a tab called "advanced", which "simple" users
don't have to use.
2 hide tags like this unless some user option called "advanced" is enabled.
3 put tags like this only in an "enhanced" map_features.xml.

>the tagging code is way complicated

In CategorySelector? I'll have to have a look.

Steve