[Tagging] Should 'highway=incline[_steep]' be discouraged?

[Matthias Julius]

Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Matthias Julius <lists at julius-net.net> wrote:
>> I would also add the values 'up_steep' and 'down_steep'
>> to 'incline=*' for this to be a equivalent replacement of the highway
>> tags.
>
> -1. This is like having "width=wide" - this should be discouraged.

'up/down' is in there to be able to tag an incline where the exact value
is not known.  Adding '_steep' would allow to differentiate a little.
Of course, what is steep and what is not is subjective - just like
surface quality.  I just don't want to loose any semantics compared to
the highway=incline tags.

>
>> I would also like to change 'incline=*' so it does not apply to nodes
>> anymore.  But, if there are objections I will hold off on this one.
>
> It may be enough to say something like "This can be applied to a node
> only when the node is part of a single way, exclusively (otherwise the
> direction of incline is ambiguous)."

This might be good enough for the one applying the tag.  But when the
next person is connecting a cross way he is unlikely to check whether
the node has an incline tag.  Editors might help here (like JOSM does by
default) by putting an icon on the node or so.

Validators could warn about ambiguous incline tags, though.

Matthias