[Talk-GB] [OSM-talk] England, Wales, Scotland borders

[John Robert Peterson]

I'm no expert on this and i've never even edited a single border -- but I've
always thought that England, Scotland, Wales issues seemed like a textbook
case for a level 3: it's not really a full country thing, but it's bigger
then a county.

I recall conversations somewhere a month or 2 ago about the maritime border
thing, and I feel this is the kind of thing that could benifit hugly from
user opinions. I think we may have just gotten that.

JR

2009/10/4 Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com>

>
> On 4 Oct 2009, at 08:12, Igor Brejc wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > For days now I've been trying to figure out how I could render borders
> > between England, Wales and Scotland using OSM data, but I keep
> > stumbling
> > into same issues. Frankly, I think the way these things are tagged
> > in UK
> > is a mess (I don't know what the situation is in other places):
> >
> >   1. Borders between these countries are tagged with the same
> >      admin_level=4 as that of subdivisions inside England (example:
> >      North East England, http://osm.org/go/evykef-?relation=151164).
> >      Now I'm not a constitutional expert, but I think Wales and
> >      Scotland represent different level of territorial division than
> >      just a collection of England's counties. And anyway, the
> >      http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative
> >      states level 4 is used for "England/Scotland/Wales border" and
> >      doesn't mention anything else.
> >   2. There is no way to render JUST land borders. Maritime borders
> >      (territorial waters) are tagged exactly the same way as their
> >      continental counterparts. And even if you accept this limitation
> >      and decide to render territorial waters they are usually cut off
> >      in the available UK OSM extracts.
> >   3. England's coast is also tagged as a border, but Wales' and
> >      Scotland's isn't.
> >
> > Please take my criticism as a constructive one. I'm trying to use OSM
> > data in a real-life situation and I think borders are some of the more
> > important data, since they are usually visible in smaller-scale maps
> > (but usually _without_ marked territorial waters). The way UK's
> > borders
> > are now tagged, the only way to render them usefully would be to
> > manually collect a list of OSM ways' IDs.
> >
> > Of course I could go and edit these things myself, but since I'm not
> > usually covering this part of the world, I don't want to step on other
> > people's toes :)
>
> I have cross-posted this to talk-gb and I suggest that we continue the
> conversation there.
>
> We certainly need to use different levels for the UK and england/
> scotland/wales but as always with borders it is a bit sensitive about
> how one does it. Is Scotland a 'country' or a 'region' etc.
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Peter
>
>
>
>
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Igor
> >
> > --
> > http://igorbrejc.net
> >
> >
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>
>
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