[Talk-us] State ref tags on ways

[Richard Welty]

On 3/11/14 3:22 PM, stevea wrote:
>
> Offering my two cents, I'd like to see a move towards consistency in
> each of the fifty states.  In California, there was a move within OSM
> to prefix County Roads with "CR " (and then the county road route ref,
> like "G2") as well as prefixing State Routes with "SR" or "CA"
> (federal Buck Act abbreviation for California).  This was done
> inconsistently, and in mapnik, makes CR and CA almost
> indistinguishable unless I squint.  Please don't make me squint, and
> please don't needlessly lengthen ref tags, which in some cases
> (California a good example) makes them hard to distinguish, not to
> mention ugly, too long and just plain wrong.
>
> A ref tag like "G2" says all it needs to say to anybody familiar with
> how California breaks apart its County Road system into several
> multiple county regions, grouping these with a letter, then suffixing
> with an integer anywhere from a few to a couple dozen routes within
> that lettered system; there is no need to prefix with "CR " as it is
> redundant (factually) and ugly (in my opinion).  Plus, signs say "G2"
> or "S19" not "CR G2" or "CR S19".  I can only guess these latter
> shields/ref tags are helpful for those "not from around here."  For
> those who are, these are just plain wrong.
>
> Plus, if I see simply "9" or "17" on a mapnik shield (small circle or
> oval), I know those to be State Routes (highways) and I don't need "CA
> " to prefix them.  I believe it to be polite and correct for "I-5" or
> "I-210" to appear on Interstates, even though all fifty states do not
> have any number collisions between their state highways and (federal)
> Interstates.
>
problem is that we end up inconsistent in that there are routes with
prefixes
and routes w/o prefixes. looking at it from the viewpoint of a data consumer
which is a program, this means headaches in developing parsers. Mapnik
doesn't
have a problem, it just renders whatever is in the ref tag, but other data
consumers may encounter issues.

what you're really making a case for is a California specific style sheet
for current mapnik, or for completing the shield project which would
take care of all these issues in a pretty conclusive way. states are all
different; in Florida where i grew up, prefixing state routes with SR is
very natural. in NY where i live now, prefixing state routes with NY is
something familiar to all New York residents (or at least, upstaters.)

one thing that is important to remember that there are data consumers
beyond the map displayed on www.openstreetmap.org. we say that you
should not tag for the renderer. i suggest that this formulation is
incorrect;
we need to tag taking into account the vast ecosystem of renderers
and other data consumers that exist out there. so don't tag for one
specific renderer (aka mapnik.) tag for all of them as best as you can.
turn relations and speed limits for routers, include POIs that mapnik
doesn't display by default but which OsmAnd can, and so forth.

richard

-- 
rwelty at averillpark.net
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