[Tagging] hiking route from= and to= tags

[Peter Elderson]

Name tag of recreational routes usually contain lots of information to make
them sortable and presentable for the end user. Theis information does not
belong in a proper name tag, but I can see why people do it, because
maintenance and presentation are unmanageable if there is no alternative.

I have started to use the from and to tags, at the same time removing this
information from the name. I still ran into some difficulties with
applications not supporting this, and not going to, because "the
information is always in the name tag". Data users supporting from and to
will keep on supporting the name tags with extra information, because they
need to be backwards compatible. So now I tag from and to, but leave the
name as it is. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.

In section relations of longer routes, I have removed the from and to
information from section names after adding the from and to tags. This
seems to work out fine. No comments received at all. I did leave the
section numbers in the name tag, because applications usually sort the
sections by name. I use section_ref=* in section relations for section
numbers, but this is not supported nor approved, and it has the
disadvantage that, if a section relation is used in multiple (super)routes,
it probably has a different section number in each (super)route. Not a big
problem, though. Tolerating section numbers in the name as an exception to
the "name is only the name as it appears on the signs" rule. I support the
rule, but until an alternative is present I don't think it is a big deal.

I have never encountered the idea that from and to indicate a mandatory
direction, just a main direction, because operators usually indicate a main
direction for maintenance and presentation purposes, while supporting both
directions on the ground. For node network routes I do not use from and to
tags though. These are bidirectional, no preference, unless explicitly
stated otherwise, so from and to tags would suggest a main direction that
doesn't exist at all.

Fr gr Peter Elderson


Op zo 27 jun. 2021 om 11:36 schreef Warin <61sundowner at gmail.com>:

> An alternative is to use the description key.
> Possibly do both, some renders may use the description key.
> Some may view the from/to as being a mandatory direction that is not true
> for most hiking routes.
>
> On 26/6/21 7:43 pm, Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Jun 25, 2021, 22:24 by ml at osm.datendelphin.net:
>
> But knowing the start and end of each segment (which was used as the
> name) helps maintaining the hiking network. So the change will add the
> from=* and to=* tags to the Swiss wiki page to map the start and end
> place. That way, the name tag does not get misused, and the data is
> still there for mappers to use for maintenance.
>
> Seems good alternative to using fictional name as form of
> mistagging for the renderer.
>
> Once such tags become clearly used it may make sense to propose
> supporting them in JOSM, iD, Vespucci etc in relation listings
> (if name tag is missing then show "{from} - {to} hiking route" in
> the name field)
>
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