[talk-au] Australian Rendering

[Darrin Smith]

John Smith wrote:
> --- On Sun, 2/8/09, Darrin Smith <beldin at beldin.org> wrote:
> 
>> Completely a matter of opinion, and again the same thing
>> could be said 
>> about innumerable bits of data that don't fit into your
>> perception of 
>> what needs to be on the map.
> 
> The same argument could be made for UK v AU opinions 
 > of what a map looks like, it's obvious you are used
 > to one way a map looks like and I'm used to another,
 > additionally it seems we use maps differently which may make 
different things relevant.

That's a given for any 2 people.
However how the same thing is store in OSM in 2 different areas is
the same. And that is what we are talking about here.

>> Are you sure they are not suburb boundaries? All over SA
>> these very 
>> cases you are talking about ARE suburb boundaries, nearly
>> the whole 
>> state (at least south of Goyder's Line) has 'suburbs'
>> defined which as I 
>> said before the ABS almost lives up to matching.
> 
> Now we're going into very subjective territory,
 > a suburb to me is a section of a metro area,
 > not a patch of dirt in the middle of no where with only a handful of 
people.

What we call the ares is not the issue. Even though just about any 
information I've found which refers to the divison of post code areas 
into named areas calls them suburbs I will accept perhaps it's not the 
best choice here because it's obviously confusing you. I apologise for that.

>> So let me see if I get this correct, because you aren't
>> used to maps 
>> looking this way we should change the way the data is
>> represented?
> 
> That's the entire point of the exercise, we all see maps differently, otherwise we'd be happy using the UK rendered maps.

By "represented" I meant in the OSM data. The underlying data should be 
consistent.

>> Ah, so there's a certain amount of 'tag for the renderer'
>> happening here 
>> also.
> 
> That's true for a lot of tags, otherwise roads would all
 > look the same and wouldn't show differently to indicate
 > the most used roads. This is all I'm really looking for,
 > to differentiate areas into importance and labeling
 > everything the same isn't descriptive enough.

These areas are of the same importance, they are the geographical name 
divisions that lie within post codes.

>> These are PLACE names not ABS names. They are quite often
> 
> So add a place tag, what would be less than hamlet?

They are not a point, they are a named area, documented in the states 
naming registry and everyone who lives in those areas lives in that 
named location.

>> the 
>> aggregation of several ABS areas into 1 for that coincide
>> with a place. 
> 
> Actually it's not that simple, some areas are bigger than the boundaries some areas cover less than the boundaries.

Yes, that's been talked about before, they're the best we've got now, we 
fix them up when we know more about them.

>> They are valid locations, they are valid suburb boundaries,
>> in fact in 
>> some areas ABS doesn't actually have all of place names
>> that exist and 
>> have boundaries.
> 
> They seem to be all named to me except non-incorporated areas which they list as unclassified.

Please read what I am saying. I did not say "Not all the ABS data has 
names" I said "the ABS data doesn't have all the names". There are even 
more of these names in existance than the ABS data would lead you to 
believe.

>> We should have no hesitation correcting ABS data because
>> they don't necessarily reflect individual ABS survey areas anyway.
> 
> What's wrong with it exactly?

Have you been reading my emails or just jumping on the points that you 
like? Many of these areas are multiple ABS survey areas joined together, 
so if you were to say "make this layer the abs data layer" it would be 
wrong anyway because it doesn't have *all* the ABS survey areas.

> Which I'm grateful for, it helps marking out things with low res sat imagery and you don't have to survey like rivers. 

I you really want them accurate you still need to survey, I've found 
plenty of cases where ABS data doesn't match exactly what's on the 
ground. But it's a darn sight better than what has existed before.

Darrin