[Talk-us] REF tags for State Highways on ways

[Paul Johnson]

On 04/09/2011 07:41 AM, Craig Hinners wrote:
> So it's clear from the responses that there are differing needs here:
> 
>     * Due to regional differences, displaying the two-letter USPS code
>       in the shield is not necessarily desirable. For example, there are
>       states where "SR" is more easily understood.

Most data consumers are tuned to use the USPS code and adjust the shield
as appropriate.  Let's not tag incorrectly for renderers that don't get
this right.

> There is nothing stopping anyone from tagging state highways with
> conceptual-level tags this instant. One could, say,
> add "highway:network:us:fl=123" tags to Florida state highway 123,
> leaving the ref tag as "SR 123". Map users see something they're
> familiar with ("SR" instead of "FL"), and automated agents of OSM data
> get a unique key to identify the concept of "that network of highways in
> the US state of Florida". It's a win-win.

Why overly complicate tagging on ways in such a matter to describe
routes?  That's what we have relations for, and it handles such
situations *very nicely*.  Rather than inventing another way to tag
incorrectly for the renderer (the whole ref= tag on ways is not ideal
for a lot of reasons stemming from the fact the project didn't
necessarily expect to extend into parts of the world where you might
have six different unique highway networks in a single state (Texas, I'm
looking at you, with your TX, LOOP, SPUR, NASA, REC, and FM routes) and
needing to handle routes before relations existed.

Now that relations *do* exist, and we have a more or less established
way of handling routes using relations, overly complicating way tagging
to describe an entirely different entity (the route, which often
incorporates many different ways) simply isn't a good idea.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 262 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20110409/85d5bd79/attachment-0001.pgp>