[Tagging] Draft Proposal: Default Langauge Format

[Wolfgang Zenker]

* Christoph Hormann <osm at imagico.de> [180926 17:53]:
> On Wednesday 26 September 2018, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> On 26.09.2018 16:14, Christoph Hormann wrote:
>>> Also in Germany we have features with no German name (most notably
>>> probably in regions with significant minority languages but also
>>> for example some English shop names, Italian restaurant names etc.)

>> You are not *really* advocating that when passign an Italian
>> restaurant called "O sole mio" I am expected to tag this with name:it
>> and not give it a proper name tag, are you? Because then I'll
>> promptly point you to a series of places that have a name the
>> language of which is not discernible...

> Yes, indicating that the name of an Italian restaurant in Germany is in 
> Italian can be fairly useful [..]

> Note nothing terribly bad would happen for most applications if someone 
> would incorrectly tag an Italian restaurant name as a German name of 
> course.

> Names in a non-discernible language have so far not been discussed.  I 
> would need to see some examples for this to form an opinion on the 
> matter.  

>>> The whole point of a concept like the one proposed here is to have
>>> a unified system that transparently covers all cases

>> Yes. The unified system goes as follows:

>> "If the default language of the smallest admin boundary enclosing
>> your feature is xx, treat any name tag you encounter as if it was a
>> name:xx tag."

> That would change the meaning of the name tag which is currently "the 
> locally used name or names in some combination" into something 
> different.  This seems very unlikely to happen for a tag with such 
> widespread use.  What you seem to be saying is that this already 
> happens to be the meaning of the name tag in Germany for >90 percent of 
> the names so you don't want the inconvenience of changing it for either 
> the few percent where it is not or to ensure a common tagging system 
> with the rest of the world where this is often much more widely not the 
> case.

> I see your point but as said this would defeat the whole purpose of the 
> idea and would further reduce the chances of it getting widely 
> implemented.  [..]

it appears to me that before discussing possible solutions we should
better agree on what the problem is. So far I see several related but
different problems mixed into one and consequently no possible agreement
on the solution.

The problems I have picked up from the discussion:
a) as a data consumer I want to know the language(s) for a given name tag
b) as a data consumer and as a mapper I want to know which language(s)
   is/are commonly spoken in a place
c) as a data consumer and as a mapper I want to know which language(s)
   is/are ususally used on name signs in a place
d) If there are names in multiple languages combined to form the name
   tag in case a, I want to know how to split a given value into the
   component languages.
e) If names in multiple languages are used together in case c, I want to
   know how to construct the name tag from the component name:xx values.
f... all the points I have missed/forgotten/ignored/...

Wolfgang