[Tagging] paved=yes/no

[Tobias Knerr]

On 19.07.2010 09:06, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:42 AM, Tobias Knerr <osm at tobias-knerr.de> wrote:
>> While the list of surface values is *potentially* unbounded, it is
>> finite at any given time. For practical purposes, just teach that list
>> of surface values on the wiki to your renderer, do a quick tagwatch
>> check to find out whether there is some other really common value and
>> ignore the rest.
> 
> OSMDoc currently lists 619 surface values
> (http://osmdoc.com/en/tag/surface/#values)

Many of these "values" are just freeform strings that someone added in
their native language. Others are typos or note/FIXME information.
Therefore, most of them are completely irrelevant for an application.

Let's look at the numbers in a different way:

OSMDoc counts 1041459 ways with surface information.

unpaved and paved alone account for 80% of total surface tags.

The 10 most common values account for 99% of total surface tags. All of
these are documented on Key:surface.

Add the next 5 values (which are also documented on Key:surface) and
you'll get 99,5%.

>> You see, mappers actually want their data to be useful.
> 
> Defining standard types with clear definitions and semantics, and
> cleaning up old data to conform to those specifications is a good way
> to assist this.

Many of the "innovative" values would long have been corrected if
surface information was actually widely used by applications.
Compatibility with applications is the primary incentive for sticking to
a specification.

Tobias Knerr