[Talk-us] Fwd: Sidewalks as footpaths

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 8:02 PM, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:
> I'm trying to work out how using name=* on the sidewalks isn't the easiest,
> most obvious answer.

Because there are walking paths with names, and that's not what you're
talking about.

What you want is essentially a reference to another object, which is
why relations are useful- but they're complex to work with.

Additionally, using any name reference means that you now need to keep
the two objects in sync in non-obvious ways.

Let's take an example from NYC.

If I had a sidewalk for 6th Avenue, what would the associated street
tag name need to be?

6th Avenue
Sixth Avenue
Avenue of the Americas

These tricky edge cases aren't insurmountable, but they add a great
deal of complexity to software needing to parse the data in a
meaningful way, the end result of which is that more times than not,
if the data model is too complex, the programmer simply doesn't
bother.

That's why I advocate using tags like sidwalk=yes/no/left/right/both
directly on the road object.

- Serge