[talk-au] I've been trying to fix the highway shields and came across this....

[John Smith]

--- On Sat, 15/8/09, Liz <edodd at billiau.net> wrote:

> ref=NH56
> is one tag trying to do two things
> 
> so i agree with Ben's general assertion that they should be
> split into network 
> and reference

The only issue is someone is proposing network=* for a completely different purpose:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_Features/Importance

It might be a better idea to use addr:* tags to indication the country/state instead of trying to lump it in with the highway designation, eg:

addr:country=australia
addr:state=nsw
network=nh

That way shields for NSW can be distinct from shields used in other states, not just distinct for Australia v rest of the world.

Big long thread on it from the talk-us list here:

http://www.mail-archive.com/talk-us@openstreetmap.org/msg00947.html

The US wiki page on this:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Interstate_Highways_Relations

Also they talk about only adding ref's to relations that have the entire highway, which makes sense, I'm having all sorts of fun trying to unbunch shields at the moment because they are all individual segments.