[Tagging] Mapping language borders, tagging offical languages?

Christoph Hormann osm at imagico.de
Sun Sep 16 13:07:48 UTC 2018


On Sunday 16 September 2018, Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
>
> *Would it be feasible for database users to query
> boundary=aboriginal_lands along with the admin boundaries*?

As said i can't really form an opinion on this without a real world 
example, the corresponding data and a suggestion how this should be 
interpreted together with the administrative boundaries.

Of course you can somehow formulate a rule for that but i am not sure if 
this would make sense and be intuitive for the mapper.

> It should be interpreted with the individual language name tags.
> If the default language is zh;zh_pinyin (Chinese and romanized
> Chinese), there should be a name:zh and name:zh_pinyin tag on each
> feature within the boundary, in theory, and these two name tags
> should be combined in an international map rendering.

But then you would need extensive external data to determine how to 
actually display combinations of names (which obviously depends on the 
languages and scripts involved).  Evidence in how the name tag is used 
for combining different names in different parts of the world shows 
that the local conventions on how to display different languages 
together varies quite strongly.

Or in other words:  It is very easy for data users to generate a list of 
languages from a format string if required but it is rather difficult 
if not impossible to generate an accurate and suitable format string 
for every combination of languages from just a list of languages.  If 
this is just a question of typesetting rules that is the resposibility 
of the map designer obviously but i have the impression this is also a 
matter of local culture w.r.t. names and languages and that is 
something that can and should be mapped.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/



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