[Talk-us] Fwd: US Route Tagging With Relations

[lordsutch at gmail.com]

Sorry meant to send to all...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: lordsutch at gmail.com
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:56:48 -0600
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] US Route Tagging With Relations
To: Zeke Farwell <ezekielf at gmail.com>

Personally I think it's best to let the renderer be as stupid as
possible - some applications might be embedded, for example. Making
the networks location or context-dependent is a recipe for disaster
IMHO.

The beauty of the proposed scheme is that it's easy for the renderer
to pick a generic symbol that is appropriate.

I - interstate shield
US - us shield
MX - Mexico shield
XX:anything - state/province generic (circle/oval)
XX:yy:anything - local generic (rectangle)

For route guidance like text-to-speech or written directions the last
part (split on colon for anything with a colon) can always be used and
will at least make some sense.

I agree it would be nice to have a North American rendering style but
that's not a data issue. And there's a lot of variety even there;
compare MapArt to Michelin to Rand McNally to AAA/Universal to DeLorme
to USGS.

On 12/24/08, Zeke Farwell <ezekielf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah we're getting a little ahead of ourselves with the shields.  The first
> step is tagging the highways in a standard scheme which would give a
> renderer sufficient data to draw shields.  Then someone has to actually
> build a renderer that draws the shields.  Thats a whole other can of worms.
>
> I don't think that the Slippy Map on openstreetmap.org will ever draw custom
> shields beyond blue interstate shields, white US highway shields, and white
> ovals for state routes.  I think it would be great to have a map with custom
> shields for every state.  What we need for that to happen is someone to set
> up a US based Open Street Map renderer.  In addition to custom shields, the
> highway colors could be drawn in more US centric way:  varying shades of
> red, orange, and yellow with green reserved for toll roads.  I think this
> would really help people in the US get involved with OSM because the map
> would look more familiar to them.  The main slippy map is never going to do
> this though, because it is international.
>
>
> 2)  I don't like the "is_in" approach - the "US:CA" approach seems to offer
>> all the appropriate information in the same place.  However, if there was
>> a
>> way to explicitly state that this is a state route, that would help in the
>> situation mentioned above.
>
>
> The "UC:CA" approach does offer all the appropriate information in the same
> place.  I don't think that is necessarily desirable though.  For example,
> Vermont Route 30 is never called  US Vermont Route 30.  The network is just
> Vermont, not United States: Vermont.  This is even more true for county
> roads.  If Windham county in Vermont had it's own numbered routes one would
> not call a route "United States, Vermont, Windham County Route 10".  In
> short, I like the "is_in" approach because keeps the network name simple.
>
> I'd rather not have to bother with the "is_in" tag at all.  For someone
> mapping there is no confusion as to whether a highway is Canadian Route 10
> or California Route 10 (unless they are really bad at geography), but I
> suppose this could get confusing for the renderers.  Ideally, I would say a
> renderer should be smart enough to know where the US Canada boundary is and
> to render routes tagged with "network: CA"  as a California route when in
> the US, and as a Canada route when in Canada.  I don't know the details of
> how the renderers work though.
>
>
> Zeke
>


-- 
Christopher N. Lawrence, Ph.D. <c.n.lawrence at gmail.com>
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Texas A&M International University
313 LBVSC, 5201 University Blvd
Laredo, Texas 78041-1920

Website: http://www.cnlawrence.com/



-- 
Christopher N. Lawrence, Ph.D. <c.n.lawrence at gmail.com>
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Texas A&M International University
313 LBVSC, 5201 University Blvd
Laredo, Texas 78041-1920

Website: http://www.cnlawrence.com/