[Talk-us] Street Naming Conventions

[andrzej zaborowski]

Hi,

On 15 May 2010 05:58, David ``Smith'' <vidthekid at gmail.com> wrote:
> I now believe that it is /also/ acceptable for the
> "name=*" tag to specify the full, unabbreviated name -- however, if
> abbreviation of that name is used commonly and consistently, then that
> abbreviated form should go in another tag.  (I've been using
> "abbr_name=*" for that.)
>
> 2) I've heard there's a bot that's automatically expanding names from
> the TIGER import.  To the operator of that bot: proceed with caution
> if you will, and /PLEASE/ preserve the abbreviated name in some other
> tag(s).

I've also been using abbr_name where there's a non-obvious way to
abbreviate the name, but actually there's no reason why it couldn't be
used always for commonly used abbreviated versions, other than it's a
bit of work to add.

In case of TIGER (I'm the person that ran the bot) it can be done
automatically to some extent so I can make another run to re-add the
original shortened names as abbr_name.  The original names, however,
were shortened according to some rules documented in the TIGER docs,
regardless of how common or consistent their usage was (following the
USPS rules, for example, they would be different in some small
percentage), so I'm not sure if that name should ever appear in a tag
that is not namespaced as a tiger tag.  On the other hand it may be a
good start for the abbr_name values, in 90% cases it should just be
correct.  In the remaining cases they can be fixed manually (rather
than having to add *all* abbr_names manually) and specially if we can
get mapnik to use the value of that tag when there isn't enough space
for the full name, then mappers would probably put some care in
maintaining the values correct.

Cheers