[OSM-talk-be] Another Nominatim fact

[Marc Gemis]

Here's another fact about Nominatim that I learned after a private
conversation with Sarah.

Nominatim has the possibility to install a default language for a
country. This is not done for Belgium, but can be done for The
Netherlands. Right now, the list is not complete and The Netherlands
is missing.

What is the result ? In case you configure multiple languages in your
browser, e.g. NL & DE, you will see DE results in case there is a
DE-name and no explicit NL-name. This is the case for Zutphen.

What will be the impact for Belgium ? Suppose a Flemish town is mapped
as name=X and name:fr=Y . You install both NL and FR in your browser.
A search will now return Y.

This means we might have to map name:NL explicitly. I know some will
consider this as mapping for the tool. Nominatim has no way (I asked)
to do this on other levels than countries. So there is no possibility
to tell it the default language for Flanders or Wallonia.

Hope this explains why in some case you get unexpected results from
Nominatim search

regards

m