[Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful

Matthias Julius lists at julius-net.net
Mon Nov 16 21:24:46 GMT 2009


David Lynch <djlynch at gmail.com> writes:

> Agreed. I can understand not wanting to abbreviate words that don't
> have a standard abbreviation, but the USPS is the de-facto arbiter of
> how addresses (and therefore street names) are written in the United
> States, and they have a well-defined list of which words are
> abbreviated and the abbreviations for those words. Any decent
> namefinder/geocoder should be able to handle the idea that "100 W 6th
> St" and "100 West 6th Street" both refer to the same address, and a
> really good one should also know that "100 West Sixth St" and "100 W
> 6" would also be at the same location.

While this is true I think there is benefit for sticking with one
version or the other within OSM.  And since Street names usually are
not abbreviated outside the US and the abbreviations might not be as
intuitive for a non-english speaker I believe it would be better if
they were spelled out completely.  IMHO it is unfortunate this was not
done during the TIGER import.  It would have been easy enough.

If some renderer considers the long names as waste of space it can
abbreviate them.

Matthias




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