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

[Josh Doe]

I think it would be useful to have a JOSM plugin which works more
generically, such as working with the associatedStreet or proposed
street relation to not only associate sidewalks with streets, but
everything else encompassed by those relations. It could have sets of
rules which would enable automatically applying the sidewalk roles to
ways tagged with footway=sidewalk (if you even need a role, since it's
evident from the tagging of the constituent ways).

Another tool could examine all footway=sidewalk ways, and highlight
which aren't part of a relation. That same "lint" tool could highlight
sidewalks which are likely incorrectly associated with a road, based
on distance and other measures.

Another tool could analyze the geometry of sidewalks and roads (using
some measure of parallel-ness and distance), and propose pairings,
which upon review could automatically create relations.

When there is sufficient interest from both mappers and developers,
these tools will be created. If the interest isn't there then they
won't.

-Josh

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 9:36 AM, David Paleino <dapal at debian.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:38:18 -0700 (PDT), Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>
>> [..]
>> Anyone can map anything in Potlatch, or JOSM, or Merkaartor, or their own
>> favourite editor, by creating the primitives manually, and adding tags,
>> using the standard UI. Of course they can.
>>
>> Yet this isn't always a sufficiently user-friendly way of creating them.
>> Sometimes, a special-purpose editor can make it more understandable for
>> newcomers, and quicker for experienced users. For example, both JOSM and
>> Potlatch have dedicated turn-restriction editors, which are much more
>> user-friendly than manually creating the relations and entering the members
>> in the appropriate roles.
>
> Now it's clearer -- but a new question arises.
>
> Did the turn-restriction editors appear before -- or at the same time -- the tag
> was drafted/approved/voted on? I don't think so. I used turn restrictions long
> before JOSM had a friendly editor.
>
> I think you're putting it backwards. *I*, as a developer (not only OSM-related,
> I'm generally speaking) would do something that works first, *after* I would
> make it fancy.
>
> I still don't understand why to accept a new tag, there should be a fancy
> UI in $editors.
>
>> [..]
>> If you've thought about it, that's great. If you have suggestions for how it
>> might be implemented, that's great. But saying "I don't use Potlatch, so I
>> can't tell how advanced his support for relations is" reads, to me, as
>> "screw you, Potlatch guys, I expect you to do all the hard work in making it
>> easy for users".
>
> That wasn't my intention, sorry (I myself seldomly use P2 for quick editing, or
> when I'm not at home).
>
>> We simply don't have infinite resources to do this with every single
>> suggestion. Making OSM easy to edit is not the sole responsibility of three
>> people on the potlatch-dev mailing list, it's _everyone_'s responsibility.
>
> I agree, but not being part of the $editor development process, I can make my
> part when suggesting a new tag. And, for example, reusing a relation -- for
> which a nice UI might already exist -- is a first step. And that's not NIH
> syndrome -- which I've been accused to have by "someone" -- it's all the
> opposite.
>
>
> David
>
> --
>  . ''`.   Debian developer | http://wiki.debian.org/DavidPaleino
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