[Tagging] Proposal: Sunset ref=* on ways in favor of relations

[Dave Swarthout]

>OK, well, in JOSM at least, using the Relation Toolbox is snappy simple

You cannot be serious, Paul. There is a relation here in Thailand, a
super-relation?, that I've been wanting to edit for months. It has three or
four relations, provincial, 2 wood multipolygons, and a river) sharing ways
along an international boundary. Trying to separate one of those wood
multipolygons (so it can be split into smaller chunks) from the rest is
something that will take hours for me to do. It's so tricky, even with the
powerful Relation Toolbox, that I've simply ignored it because there's too
much other work over here that has a higher priority.

I don't want to continue this discussion ad nauseum because this list isn't
the place for it. We'll have to agree to disagree and just move on. Someday
when I have plenty of time maybe I'll try making some suggestions to the
people that develop tools for JOSM.

On Sat, Nov 7, 2015 at 7:24 PM, Michael Reichert <nakaner at gmx.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Am 2015-11-06 um 11:24 schrieb Paul Johnson:
> > […]
> > *The fix: * I propose a goal of December 31, 2016 to eliminate ref=* as a
> > method to describe an overlying route; this should be more than ample
> time
> > for existing data consumers to catch up on doing a move and ensure data
> > consistency for routes.  Kill the dinosaur:
> >
> >    - Deprecate ref=* on ways from having anything to do with the routes
> >    they run over, use relations instead and phase out the use of
> >    route-describing refs on ways (be it removal of the tag or
> replacement of
> >    the key's value with a ref that actually applies to the way instead
> of the
> >    route).
>
> I strongly oppose this.
>
> Usings relations for something which can be expressed using tags on ways
> is usually a bad idea.
>
> (1) Data users have to parse relations (i.e. need more processing time
> and memory). Currently you only have to import ways (and nodes are used
> to build the geometry if you convert OSM data into OGC simple features)
> into your data structure (e.g. a PostGIS database) if you want to get
> all road segments of German motorway "A 1". You just have to query the
> ref column (maybe use LIKE opeator or something similar because A 1 and
> A 61 share some road segments).
>
> (2) Mappers have to work with relations. This makes editing OSM data
> more difficult. We shold keep editing easy and the entrance hurdle as
> low as possible. Mappers (and developers, too) are the most important
> and most valueable resource at OSM.
>
> (3) Relations break easily. We already have enough work to get all those
> multipolygons repaired which are broken by newbies (and experienced)
> mappers not to mention all those public transport relations which have
> been broken sometimes for months or years.
>
> >    - Stop rendering this key and instead render the relations in
> opencarto
> >    and other featured layers.
>
> Which key is rendered and which not, is decided by those people spending
> days and weeks of time into OSM Carto. They usually decide which tags
> they render and which not by looking which tags are in use and which not.
>
> I think that we will still use ref=* over route relations at OSM in the
> next two years.
>
> Best regards
>
> Michael
>
>
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-- 
Dave Swarthout
Homer, Alaska
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Travel Blog at http://dswarthout.blogspot.com
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