[Talk-lv] [OSM-talk] Proliferation of path vs. footway

[Lauris Bukšis-Haberkorns]

2009/8/10 Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk>:

>> This must be discussed, completed and accepted asap so more people
>> could start using it without fear that it would change..
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Footway
>
> This is missing the point completely :(
> Micro mapping needs to have a SEPARATE way for this. Just the short distance
> between my own road and the next village has several changes of side and
> position for the footpath, which simply adding tags to the existing ways does
> not properly address!
>
> This is a case of the distinct difference between 'highway' defines
> everything, and mapping the actual features rather than guessing where they
> are relative to some vaguely connected highway. If we are never going to
> provide high resolution maps, then the guestimate method works, at some point,
> actual road widths become important, as does additional features either side
> of those roads?
>
> Once you start adding this sort of fine detail it has to be done as a separate
>  object. Breaking up a simply way every time the footpath detail changes, and
> then trying to combine that with additional ways where they fall a bit further
> way from the road is what needs to be avoided?

I think that both ways should coexist. In city most of the roads have
footway just next to it and in these cases just adding footway=both
and footway.width=x (or what ever syntax is decided) will make things
a lot easier. In this case if adding separate ways for footway there
will be three times more ways and it will be really hard to maintain
such map if something changes. Also it will be easier to specify rules
to renderer as I think that not everyone will need to render footways
near ways while footways in parks are still important.
Of course footway proposal is not complete enough as I would like it
to see but that could be discussed.
I completely agree with you that it wont work in all situations so
both schemes should coexist. If we want later to move to one scheme
footway tag could be easily converted from footway=both + width (or
default width if not specified) to separate way.

Lauris