[Tagging] land cover/surface=* tagging Re: Landuse border alignment

[John Smith]

On 15 May 2010 05:50, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
> you're insisting on this one? Yes, you are right: in traditional

Even you seem to agree this is a good idea...

> geoscience landuse is a precise term, it describes the usage of a
> given area in a generalized way. Unfortunately this is not true when
> it come to OSM: just open your eyes. Have you ever downloaded a piece
> of Berlin? You would be astonished ;-). Our landuse is often
> fragmented (IMHO not bad, because if there is different stuff, how
> else should you point that out? It is easier to summarize different
> landuses to one according to type and size than it is to divide 1 big
> generalized landuse automatically into all of it's subparts).

OSM is all about evolving and improving over time, just because
something was done in the past, like ways with > 2000 nodes, doesn't
mean it should be done in future, especially when it would be nice to
tag both land use and land cover on the same area.

> How many landcover-tags are there in OSM? Is grass, garages or
> landfill a landuse? Another example: cut off (burned down) forest:

grass would be a land cover, garages would be land use (buildings
would be land cover), landfill could be both, although they may have
put grass on top of a former landfill.

> this would probably still be called landuse=forest in an official map,
> but in OSM if there are no trees it will not be a forest.

landuse=forest, surface=scorched_earth :D

> On the other hand: I would like to see this mess tidyed up. In this
> case I suggest to first change (extend) render rules and then

I filed a bug for surface=grass, we also possibly need one for
natural=beach, surface=sand|gravel etc...

> encourage people to change tagging. This is all because of tagging for
> the renderers: because it is sad to tag "correct" and you don't see
> anything on the map ;-). I don't promote a cluttered or coloured map:

I wonder if there is anything that could be done to stream line this
process, I guess a new thread on all possible surfaces and possible
and then figuring out how they should render, and finally submitting a
patch or at least a bug report.

> I do promote rendering of lots of tags, but they don't have to get all
> different colours. Also few colours (i.e. many features/tags with the
> same colour) can be a way to do it.

Before working out colours, or at least in conjunction with, perhaps
we should try to compile a list of land covers and document them.