[talk-au] Coastlines, was: Rivers

[John Smith]

Sorry to drag up this thread, but it's become relevant again.

--- On Wed, 20/5/09, Ian Sergeant <isergean at hih.com.au> wrote:

> There is some contention where the coastline ends, and
> where the river begins.

>From a practical stand point, coastlines are treated differently to other similar ways in that they can be non-closed ways and still render.

Things like natural=land must be closed or it won't render, same with waterway=riverbank, I'm guessing but I doubt these are the only examples.

natural=coastline is dealt with by shape files, shape files don't update with the same frequency as other OSM data.

Any way, back to how this is relevant, at present if you have over 2000 points outlining a body of water it won't be accepted by the current limitations of the API and so you'd have multiple closed ways/areas which is also a hack to get this to render.

So the river/coastline thing is also technically contentious, not just distance from the ocean or if there is salt water present in the water :)