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

[Graeme Fitzpatrick]

On Mon, 14 Dec 2020 at 21:41, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

>
> What I don't like in OSM is naming for large geographic areas,


Thanks for the explanation, Frederik, but I'd like to make a couple of
points

like "the Alps", "the Black Forest", or "the Bay of Biscay", for two
> reasons:
>
> First, there can be any number of such areas.


Why is that a problem?

Are you concerned that somebody may mistake the Black Forest in Southern
Germany with the (hypothetical!) Black Forests in the US & Australia?

Or that different people may map it in different spots? If you've mapped
the Black Forest roughly north-south, then I map something E-W in the same
area & also call it the Black Forest, somebody is going to notice & ask me
why? & if I can't come up with a good explanation, it's going to be
reverted.

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.


So? If I look at a map eg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest#/media/File:Relief_Map_of_Germany,_Black_Forest.png,
it tells me that the Balck Forest is a more or less oval-shaped area in
Southern Germany. Why can't we draw a similar rough oval in OSM & call it
Black Forest? If someone then extends it so that Stuttgart or Zurich are
included, once again, it will be spotted & corrected.

We name towns & cities all the time, with a nice, neat line saying that
this area is part of this town, & outside this line isn't. But what about
that house 300 m down the road - is it part of the town or not?

OSM is not good with fuzziness; OSM forces us to have an exact point or
> line or polygon for something.


I would have said that everything in the natural world is "fuzzy", indeed,
everything that's not an exact geometric man-made object eg a building or
fence, will almost certainly be?

I know that I've mapped woodland areas previously & the boundary doesn't
run along the exact edge of the treeline - yes, most of the trees are
inside the line, with only a "few" outside it, but how could it be done any
better? I could very carefully go along with a million points, twisting &
turning to get every tree, but then next week, one of them falls down, so
it's then got to be corrected!

For fuzzy labels, you need a different system that should exist outside of
> OSM's current data types.


Does it have to be outside?

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),


& that's (I think) exactly what Anders wants, & I'll go along with him!

It doesn't have to be "exact", just so long as somebody can look at the map
& say that that area there is the "Whatever"!

Thanks

Graeme
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