[OSM-talk-be] boundary names and my program

[Jan-willem De Bleser]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Sander Deryckere <sanderd17 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why municipalities and not part-municipalities? When you enter a village,
> you get signs as these:
> http://1.standaardcdn.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2009/06/04/A7_BORDJE_IVH.MM.jpg.h170.jpg.280.jpg
> So the part-municipality is in a bigger font than the municipality. I wonder
> what's your reason to choose the municipality name if you really want the
> lowest admin level.
>
> Although I'll never add those names myself (I think it's useless), I also
> don't oppose adding the names. I only hope it happens consistently.

This is precisely the problem, and is the same discussion we had about
bicycle node networks - it *won't* happen consistently because it's a
made-up name.

Municipality, part-municipality, city, country... a border can border
on multiple regions simultaneously, so why should one particular type
get priority? Why "A - B" and not "B - A"? Why not prefix the name
with the word "Municipality", so that people know that the two names
are municipality names and not a different type of border?

If it's meant for mappers, put it in "note". Better yet have the
software derive it, but the problem with that this can become complex
and expensive and the Potlatch devs don't seem to give a rat's ass.


If you want to plot municipalities as borders and not as a tagged node
within anonymous borders, remove the nodes and create a closed way (or
relation) for *each* municipality. These will overlap where
municipalities or other types of regions border each other, but now
the software can choose which border type it's interested in and
easily grab the right name. Use relations and it'll be trivial to find
where borders overlap, and this would accurately represent coinciding
borders.

I actually kind of like that idea. You could apply the same thing to
postcodes and any other area-associated facts.

Cheers,
Jw