[Tagging] on the name of a tag for landcover

[Martin Vonwald]

2012/7/31 LM_1 <flukas.robot+osm at gmail.com>:
> When you search wiki for grass, you get landuse=grass. When you type
> grass in JOSM's preset  search box, you get landuse=grass. Potlatch
> does not offer any direct way to tag grass. landuse=grass was probably
> used before anyone thought about the difference between landuse and
> landcover (in osm tagging).
> Today's renderers support landuse=gras and do not support landcover=anything.
> That being the reasons for landuse=* domination it is hardly enough to
> proclaim it the better way.

+1

It hardly is the better way. The key landuse is contaminated with a
lot of values that simple don't fit or are used in an inconsistent
way. Most prominent example for sure is landuse=forest, which
currently is used in case the land is covered with trees. But this is
not a landUSE. If the land is used for growing trees than
landuse=forest is correct, but there may not be any trees at all at
the current time because they are just being planted (landuse=forest +
landcover=grass). On the other hand there could be a lot of trees but
completely unmanaged (landcover=trees + no landuse).

That's the main reason why landuse (and also natural) needs some heavy
cleanup which of course would deprecate some tags and for sure take
some time. But I don't see any other way.

I started an overview on my user page of the current usage of
landuse/natural and how it might look if we use landcover. If someone
is interested take a look.

Martin