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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 14.12.20 12:20, Anders Torger wrote:
> My sense is that OSM community do want naming in nature as well, but
> only if it can be made very simple. Unfortunately that is not always
> compatible with reality, and here we are...

Personally I think naming is desirable for clear features. This mountain
peak, this protected tree, this lake.

What I don't like in OSM is naming for large geographic areas, like "the
Alps", "the Black Forest", or "the Bay of Biscay", for two reasons:

First, there can be any number of such areas. Anyone can invent
something. I can speak of the Alps, or the French Alps, or the Northern
French Alps, or the Vanoise Massif, I can group some regions at will and
make up a new name. These are not administrative boundaries where it is
clear which of them exist "as a region" and and which don't. Of course
everyone knows what I mean when I say "Germany north of Oldenburg" but
that doesn't mean that "Germany north of Oldenburg" is a name that
should be on the map, or a polygon we need in OSM. If I issue a tourist
guide for, say, "Vanoise et Maurienna", does that then make "Vanoise et
Maurienna" a region? How many people need to issue a tourist guide for
this to happen?

Second, these areas are usually ill-defined: There are some places that
are clearly in the Black Forest, and some that are clearly not in the
Black Forest, but there's not one boundary line - there's fuzziness. OSM
is not good with fuzziness; OSM forces us to have an exact point or line
or polygon for something. For fuzzy labels, you need a different system
that should exist outside of OSM's current data types. Either by adding
a new fuzzy data type to OSM (no need to assemble 1000 ways with a total
of 20,000 points to exactly describe the outline of the Alps if all you
want is a nice big lettering in approximately the right spot), or by
keeping these cartography options in a separate system altogether.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"