[Talk-GB] "United Kingdom Tagging Guidelines" on the OSM wiki: due for an update?

Andrew Chadwick a.t.chadwick at gmail.com
Fri Feb 17 17:35:36 GMT 2012


> On 17 February 2012 15:43, Nick Whitelegg <Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk
> <mailto:Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     From my understanding, a minimum of ONE to TWO tags are needed:
> 
>     a) a highway tag. This represents the physical properties of the
>     way, e.g. service, track, path (or footway - see below)
>     b) if applicable, a designation tag. This represents the RoW status.

Agreed. Although I think highway=footway is a more tightly defined kind
of duck than highway=path, and says more. Probably it's better for
international map consumers (forinners!) for us to still suggest
intermediate mappers tag things with little yellow arrows as

  highway=footway
  designation=public_footpath

than

  highway=path
  designation=public_footpath

because if that's all the info you have, the former says a little more
by implication and the latter compels data consumers to know about crazy
UK legislation rather than crazy OSM tagging implications when routing
bikes, say.


On 17/02/12 16:39, Graham Jones replied to Nick:
> I agree - I will normally tag a public footpath as highway = path |
> track, designation = public_footpath.  I may include a surface=gravel |
> paved if it is not a mud path.
> I too only use highway=footway for urban footpaths, but you see plenty
> of them in the country and I don't usually bother changing them.

FWIW, I tend to use footway as my "looks like it's deliberately made
_for_ feet" tag, and path as my "looks like it's merely made _by_
miscellaneous narrow-trail traffic" tag. No particular urban/rural split.

I'd still love to see some areas with big outbreaks of
highway=path+designation-only, or highway=path+access-tags-only as
representations of public paths. Must throw down some overpass-api
quadrats around the country to see what people are doing in various
areas, before we completely throw highway=path to the Germans.
Statistically, would highway=path + designation=public_footpath vs.
highway=footway + designation=public_footpath be a worthwhile
comparison? Should get around the legacy issue with h=footway.

Good that everyone's happy about designation=* and generally focusing on
simplicity, anyway. There's hope :)


I won't be making any sweeping changes to the main page without putting
up drafts for review and announcing them here.


-- 
Andrew Chadwick



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