[Tagging] highway=footway - Advanced definition: Distinction footway vs path

[John Willis]

> On Aug 29, 2015, at 7:17 AM, geow <ksgeo at web.de> wrote:
> 
> An additional highway type "trail" is no solution to the problem of missing
> decent classification criteria "path vs footway" and would  likely cause
> further trouble for many sorts of reasons.

When you have one region say "all sidewalks are paths" and another region go "all sidewalks are footways, and all trails are paths", it leads to a big pile of crap. Which is what highway=path pooped out on the rug. 

If path is supposed to be this super flexible tag, which can take on so many different use cases - but there is also hard defined "cycleway,bridleway, footway" tags - then you need to have the rest of the hard defined tags! Trail is a common way type, and is very distinct from a sidewalk in purpose, access, and duckiness. 

Sidewalk (in iD) is preset as a footway. 

If I know it isn't a cycleway or a bridleway, and is built to neither of those standards anyway, I don't need the generic inclusiveness of path - I need a tag that says "I am a trial!" 

Being able to confuse a trail and a sidewalk in basic tagging and rendering is a horrible and unbelievably misleading situation. Its like confusing motorway and driveway. 

Lets correct this. 

At least give me highway=trail so I can avoid having Mount Fuji covered with sidewalks. 

Javbw