[Talk-transit] [Spam] Re: Modelling complex stations

[Shaun McDonald]

On 27 Feb 2009, at 01:00, Simon Ward wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 11:54:56PM +0000, Shaun McDonald wrote:
>> It is much easier to work out what else goes together by using a
>> relation, rather than the is_in tag. The is_in tag is a bad tag as we
>> are dealing with geo data, so we already know what it is in, if all  
>> the
>> boundaries are in the data. Relations are much better for linking
>> related data. Imported in the right way, you can get two way
>> relationships setup correctly.
>
> My take:
>
> The is_in tag has a freeform value.  is_in=Manchester could mean one  
> of
> many things:  Is this Manchester, UK, or one of the many other
> Manchesters[1]?  It defines a relationship between the object and the
> area, but can be ambiguous.
>
> Better in the Manchester case is to have a relation linking things in
> (that particular) Manchester.  The relation unambiguously defines the
> object.
>
> [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_(disambiguation)
>

That is a better way of putting it for mappers, though I would add  
that you should not place everything in a town/city/village/country  
into a relation. I should really switch my developer head off sometimes.

Shaun