[Potlatch-dev] POI features vs area features

[Richard Fairhurst]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Anyway, before I take a sledgehammer to map_features.xml

Thanks for volunteering for this one - it's definitely something that 
needs sorting now that Bing imagery makes it more likely that people 
will map areas rather than just POIs. There's no need to take a 
sledgehammer to it, just (I'm sure you know this) make sure the 
particular feature has both point and area elements, thus:

   <feature name="Marina">
     <category>water</category>
     <area/>
     <point/>
     <tag k="leisure" v="marina"/>
     <inputSet ref="names"/>
     <inputSet ref="common"/>
   </feature>

> 1) Is there a particular philosophy regarding POIs vs other features
> that I should be aware of?

Not AFAIK.

> 2) Are there reasons to group all POI features together, rather than
> putting the POI and area-version of each feature together (or, where
> possible*, merging them)?

Definitely use a single <feature> element with both <area/> and <point/> 
subelements, rather than using two separate <feature>s.

If the tags are divergent, then the syntax to use is:

     <point>
       <tag k="amenity" v="frog_bothering_ground"/>
     </point>
     <area>
       <tag k="amenity" v="frog_bothering_ground"/>
       <tag k="frogs" v="yes"/>
     </area>

This isn't supported yet (see line 929 of map_features.xml) but it 
should be. :)

> 3) Should we take into account the likelihood of any given POI being
> mapped as a node (ie, supermarket is far more likely than vending
> machine), or take a blanket approach that all POIs can be areas?

Don't assume that all POIs can be areas. <point/><area/> is 
self-explanatory: overloading <point/> to mean "oh, it can be an area as 
well" would be counter-intuitive.

cheers
Richard