[Tagging] custom road ref shields

[Tod Fitch]

If I recall correctly from a discussion on the Talk-us list a while back, the preferred way in the US is now to specify the shield in a route relation. I did not follow the discussion fully but my impression is that the tagging allowed for custom specification of the shield. It looks like https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_relations shows the route relation tagging with symbol=* specifying a url to the shield symbol svg.

Perhaps that solution would work for areas outside the US too.


On Nov 27, 2014, at 5:48 AM, johnw wrote:

> I have a question about creating custom road shields, and I know this ties into -carto - but I think it needs tags to work, so I’ll start here in the tagging list. 
> 
> I was thinking of a method for adding custom badges or shields to roads and generic objects - usually country specific things, such as the icons for types of roads, the icons for a police station, etc. This could be used for business icons, but I assume there is some kind of legal and rendering mess for that, so I’m not talking about businesses - just road shields, “emergency”-like icons, etc.
> 
> if we come up with a tagging solution that refers to a specific shield, then it should be easy for badging to be implemented in -carto and other mapping software, right?
> 
> Roads:
> 
> badge:japan=national_road
> badge:japan=prefectural_road
> badge:japan=tollway
> 
> badge:usa=interstate        
> 
> Different standards in regions of countries could be easily implemented as well, along with custom official road tags (like California’s “scenic highway designation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Scenic_Highway_System_(California) ) 
> 
> <70px-California_Scenic_State.svg.png>  (California Scenic highway sign for state roads) = usa-ca-sr-state
> 
> By following an easy format  badge:country-region-county-city. I doubt there will be *categories* of roads lower than the county level, but you never know. 
> 
> badge:usa-ca=highway
> badge:usa-ca-sr=state
> badge:usa-ca-sandiego=county_road
> 
> 
> Buildings: 
> 
> badge:japan=police 
> 
> This might also work for custom renderings of country specific ways. For example, the Shinkansen system is always traditionally rendered with a black and white striped line that has longer segments than the normal B&W striped lines used for the normal national system train lines system (often ~50% longer). Other train lines are rendered with solid black/dark grey lines. this is a common way of differentiating the lines, as the stations on the lines are the major relative navigational landmarks of Japan (since street names and “street numbers” are virtually non-existant). 
> 
> Even most unofficial maps usually follow these guidelines as well, as this one shows. 
> (the shinkansen is striped, but it green on this map, the B&W is the national JR system, and solid colors are the different “private” lines - thin for subway, thick for above-ground) 
> http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xUSQcEJEcJ0/UHkSfU7qEPI/AAAAAAAAPyU/fdAZDbuGTxk/s1600/tokyo+total+train+map.png
> 
> But currently there is no way to dictate what should be shown, and standard b&w rendering in -carto is incorrect for Japan. 
> 
> badge:japan=shinknsen
> badge:japan=jr_line
> badge:japan=private_rail
> 
> Maybe this could be done with the colour=* tag [colour=long_bw] but colour is currently ignored, AFAIK.
> 
> 
> The uniformity of country to country rendering in -carto because of the lack of a system for taggers to designate which badges/shields to use means we are choosing to have a worse map because it doesn’t conform to expected local customs; or worse, or we are ignoring the confusion brought by these mismatches in renderings  (eg, police icons are uniform, road shields are uniform, etc ) as not a problem that needs addressing in OSM directly (ie: let -carto worry about it)
> 
> I know some of this could be done by regional choices in how -carto renders certain tags ( Maybe a new railway=high_speed_rail in Japan is rendered differently), but it seems that more fine grain control over badges would be a better long term solution for everything. 
> 
> if we make the tags and the proper references in OSM, and then submit the proper bitmap/vector file to -carto (whatever it is that is needed), then wouldn’t this be a good solution to remedy the generic ovals found in the -carto render, and supply even more information to database users? 
> 
> Is limiting it to shields for roads to start with make it somewhat more manageable, or is the whole thing a bad idea from the start?
> 
> If we’re able to have information on what badge or shield (or whatever is important) associated with an object in OSM, that information can be used by all renderers, right?
> 
> 
> Javbw
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