[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Sidewalks as separate ways

Serge Wroclawski emacsen at gmail.com
Fri Mar 25 11:21:51 GMT 2011


On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 4:37 AM, David Paleino <dapal at debian.org> wrote:

>> One can take exactly the opposite stance, which is that in order to
>> help the blind, we should make it as easy as possible to map things
>> that they care about. Therefore a sidewalk=yes tag would be the
>> fastest way to get the maximum data into the map.
>
> That's not the "maximum data", you know?
>
> The "blind-argument" was the one that made me re-think the whole scheme.
>
>> This is especially important when talking about rendering and routing,
>> which I think are the main use cases of this tag.
>
> Routing, not rendering. We don't care about rendering, do you?

> And there are plugins drawing parallel ways, you know?

> 1) add name=... to the sidewalk, but it's redundant, even if simpler;
> 2) use a relation.

> This is really a myth IMHO.
> They're hard to work with in Potlatch, maybe, but I see it as a bug of the
> editor. In JOSM, for example, they're correctly handled, and are rather easy to
> work with IMVHO.

> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Sidewalk_as_separate_way#Relation
>
> The proposed relation is associatedStreet -- or, my favourite, the proposed
> "street" (which should IMHO replace associatedStreet, but that's another story)
>
> If you want some examples:
>
>  http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/254299
>  http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/1198910
>
> Do you want me to link these from the proposal page?
>
>> Generally, I think this proposal seems to be more of a reaction.
>

> I agree, but "sidewalk={yes|left|both|right|none}" is just not enough. It
> could be used as a first-pass mapping, yes. But, as written in the proposal
> page, I'd regard it as "highway=road" for streets. Yes, there's a sidewalk
> somewhere, but that's it.

I think it tells me "just enough".

You're proposing a new relation type, a set of associated tags, etc.
in support of the sidewalk data.

I'd like to suggest you should sit down and work out some mapnik rules
for this, and work out a way for PL2 users to enter the relation and
associations you've created.

At the very least, this could help the downstream tool folks
understand your proposals, but I think it'd also help you refine your
proposal by helping you step back and see how tools would need to
interact with it.

The only thing I out and out disagree with entirely is your suggestion
to tag sidewalks with a name.

I'm concerned this will confuse folks. And by folks, I mean mappers,
routers, renderers and editors.. That's why I think this scheme needs
more work, because, when you map sidewalks as separate ways, you have
to use a relation, and how exactly that's to work isn't fully figured
out.

- Serge



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