[talk-au] Wither Sydney suburb boundaries?

[Ian Sergeant]

On 29 April 2014 12:56, Jason Ward <jasonjward5 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have intentions of following the British structure for QLD boundaries (no
> permission to use this dataset yet).  Boundary is the chosen type there:
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1464290
>
> multipolygon, though, is "winning" that race it seems:
> http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/type

I don't think that indicates multipolygon type is more popular than a
boundary type for a relation defining a boundary.  Multipolygons have
extensive usage independent of boundaries.  I suspect the only reason
that boundary is even in the race, is due to some large imports.

The issue stems from overloading of the meaning of 'type', in the
relation definition.

Multipolygon uses 'type' as defining the geometry of a relation.  This
appears to be the original usage.  And a boundary clearly has this
geometry.  So, if 'type' refers to geometry - as it did originally -
then boundary should never have been used as a type, and it should
just have been a multipolygon.

This usage isn't apparent from the word 'type', and you can see why
the person who came along and created boundaries thought they were a
of a different type, even though they were of the same geometry.  And
if type was meant to define the geometry, then it would have been a
idea to use a different tag originally.

Now we have type being used with both meanings.

Ian.