[Tagging] Reviving the path discussion - the increasing importance of trails in OSM

[Andy Townsend]

On 22/05/2020 15:55, Daniel Westergren wrote:
> And there actually seems to be a pull request finally solving the 
> paved/unpaved rendering that was opened 7 years ago?!? 
> https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/4137
>
> If that makes it to the default map it will certainly help people to 
> tag surface, because they will see that it makes sense.
>
>
I'm sure you didn't mean it to sound like it, but this does read 
somewhat as if rendering "surface" on paths is somehow "obvious" and 
"easy", and it's an "oversight" that the OSM Carto folks haven't been 
doing it since basically forever.

It's not - I think that pnorman's comment of 
https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/3399#issuecomment-596656115 
still applies:

 > I'm of the opinion that the only way we can get the cartographic 
"space" to render unpaved surfaces is to drop something else, like 
access restriction rendering.

I think that there's another problem with the standard style as well - 
aside from surface rendering it's hugely biased towards urban centres.  
Looking at https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/53.9023/-0.8856 you 
can't see any paths at all at that zoom level due to the "Central 
European Graveyard problem" - compare with 
https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#zoom=13&lat=53.9006&lon=-0.8795 
to see what you're missing.

What we need are concrete suggestions of how to get there from here, 
(and Ture Pålsson's mail of 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2020-May/052747.html 
is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for).

Adding a sane surface rendering in addition to everything else is hard - 
I've not managed it across the board at https://map.atownsend.org.uk 
although that is influenced by sac_scale, trail_visibility and width.  
All suggestions gratefully received, but what's needed some code that 
people can play with and see what the effect is on various areas and 
different zoom levels - not just emails to the tagging list*.

Best Regards,

Andy

* yes, I do realise the irony of "yet another email to the tagging list"!

      75  Tag:amenity=motorcycle_taxi not approved
      58  Remove non-prefixed versions of 'contact:' scheme
      49  RFC ele:regional
      42  relations & paths
      35  Doorzone bicycle lanes
      34  Permanent ID/URI --- off topic email
      28  Feature Proposal - RFC - Recreational route relation roles
      27  Reviving the path discussion - the increasing importance of 
trails in OSM