[Tagging] How to put a name tag on an area with more than one type?

Anders Torger anders at torger.se
Fri Dec 11 16:07:53 UTC 2020


Hello,

I was on this list a while back expressing some frustration over 
limitations when tagging nature and thought about getting involved in a 
process for change, but I came to realize that it's not feasible for me 
in my current life situation, so I've decided to continue be a normal 
mapper as before, doing what I can do with features that exist today.

Anyway, if to be a mapper at all, I still like to solve some of my 
naming issues in the best/least bad ways possible today. I'm currently 
mapping a national park in Sweden, Muddus. It's in Laponia and consists 
of mighty wetlands and old forest. These wetlands are named, like is 
common in Sweden and Sami lands. For us navigating in wildlife, names in 
nature are important.

A wetland polygon can be named in OSM, so the situation is better than 
for example for named slopes (also common). However, a wetland here can 
consist of both bog and marsh (and it's important to make the 
difference, since one is easy to walk on, the other not so much). That's 
two different natural types and thus can't be in the same multipolygon 
(as outers).

Asking on OSM Help website for a solution I got the answer to make a new 
containing multipolygon and set the name on that. That would be quite 
elegant for sure, but JOSM warns about that, can't have a name without a 
type, and if I set the type, say natural=wetland without any subtype, I 
get a JOSM warning that I have natural features on top of eachother. If 
I still upload it OSM-Carto does render out the name but you can see 
that the wetland pattern of the outer polygon is drawn on top of the 
contained polygons, so it does not seem to be the way to do it.

The least bad way I've come up with is to just name all polygons 
belonging to the same wetlands the same, and hope for that in the future 
smart renderers will understand that polygons with shared borders and 
shared name is the same named entity.

Any ideas or suggestions?

/Anders



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