[OSM-talk-be] some thoughts and remarks about border mapping

[Luc Van den Troost]

On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 00:24 +0200, Maarten Deen wrote:

> I have a big problem with this "left" and "right" notion. You don't have left 
> and right with lakes or islands or any other area. IMHO a administrative 
> boundary also defines an area. An area is closed (be it by way of closed way or 
> by relation) and therefore does not need indication what is inside and what is 
> outside.
> 

For an area, like a lake, the boundary of the lake only describes the
lake and goes all around.

Administrative boundaries are always 'mutual' and do not 'belong' to one
country, comunity, ..., it's always a border between 2 similar things,
and belongs to 2 comunities. Therefor the left/right makes sense
(instead of making 2 borders at the same place, like one for
Antwerpen/Berchem, one for Edegem at the same place)


An exception might be the districts or 'deelgemeenten' where you can
have districts in one comunity, bot not in the other. F.i. district of
Ekeren borders the comunity of Stabroek where (i think) there are no
'districts' present. 


A (probably much too) trivial thought about admin_levels... Is it
possible to tag the border part between Lillo and Doel (Schelde river
north of Antwerpen) as

admin_level= 6;7;8;9
meaning this border is for province, arrondissement, city and district. 

Some tags can/do have multiple values. Don't know if that could work
here. Also, if it does, what is left and right (district, city,
arrondissement, province?) 

Luc