[openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website] Add OpenLocationCode to OSM website (#1807)

Peter notifications at github.com
Fri Jan 4 22:06:45 UTC 2019


Hi!    Hum... There are interpretation problems... And I am new here... before to answer, some review:

## Terminology

*code*  or *geocode* or "location code" ... or "latitude/longitude *hash*"?

I am using the term "geocode" to designate the hashes and "geocode algorithm"  to designate the [hash functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function): the recipes that converts latitude/longitude into a specific code convention... **geocode** is ok?

Sometimes a geocode can be used as *postcode*, see [Correios de Cabo Verde using PlusCode](http://www.correios.cv/conteudo.aspx?id=1843&cid=1844) and [Ireland’s  system using Eircode](https://www.eircode.ie/what-is-eircode): they are good and modern because is not "only a postcode" (area code) but can be used as geocode of the point-of-interest... A big and long discussion make sense if we are **imagining a far future where OSM can help to resolve free geocodes**,  replacing [non-free-postcodes](https://index.okfn.org/dataset/postcodes/).

## any good and free geocode to OSM website

Ideal is to prepare the shorter [OSM.ORG](http://OSM.ORG)  domain as "name resolver", like Nominatin, only for pointing  in the map  or for JSON responses...

... This discussion started about an specific technology, the OpenLocationCode, but  OSM can adopt any other  one:

* `http://osm.org/geo:{geoUriValue}`  ideal is to offer a resolver for the [RFC 5870's](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5870) strings.

* `http://osm.org/olc/{olcCode}`  for original OpenLocationCode 8+N digits geocodes, without context.

* `http://osm.org/ghs/{geohashCode}`  for original [Geohash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash), without context. PostGIS, at OSM server, offers [ST_PointFromGeoHash()](https://postgis.net/docs/ST_PointFromGeoHash.html).

* ...

* `http://osm.org/pluscode/{context}/{olcShortCode}`  for PlusCode-like  short-OpenLocationCode, with 6+N digits geocodes. The context can be resolved by Nominatim... Ideal to use [ISO_3166-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:BR) standard instead free-text. Example: city of Altamira in Brazil is `BR-PA-Altamira`. There are an hierarchy names, and each name is the official jurisdiction for the next name. (e.g. `BR` is the jurisdiction for `AM`, etc. and `PA`).   The supposed "good context" of PlusCode is not valid for some jurisdictions like BR, here we have two cities of "São Carlos", but "BR-SP-SaoCarlos" is unique in the hierarchy. <br/>Unlike Google, the OSM community can support the sovereign decisions of the jurisdictions.

* ....

So, for my personal vision, it makes sense (and is technically simple!), to implement not only (monopoly) OpenLocationCode, but also some other free and good solution to test other possibilities and compare efficiences  (Geohash is [base32](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base32), so **is shoter** tham OLC that is base20).
 
----

PS: there are a lot of other technologies, perhaps we need to select 2 or 3 to really test the OSM behaviour and the community demands... Example: [what3words](https://what3words.com/)  is proprietary, but is not impossible to create [good alternatives](http://www.what3fucks.com/).


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