[Talk-us] Elevation in local units

[Harald Kliems]

Hi Steve:
one tag where units are in common use is maxspeed. The default is km/h but
you can also use mph or knots. I don't see why this wouldn't be feasible
for the ele tag as well.

If you look at taginfo, you can also see that ft is used quite a bit --
unfortunately often in an inconsistent way, e.g. ele=3643_ft or 3643ft.
http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/ele#values (you have to search for ft
in the search box).

 Harald.

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 8:57 PM Steve Friedl <steve at unixwiz.net> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I appreciated being able to join my first Mappy Hour yesterday, though
> without mic/camera. I’m quite enamoured with this project and hope to fit
> in with the goals and the vibe.
>
>
>
> One thing we talked about, and I’d like to explore more formally, is how
> to deal with elevation in local units.
>
>
>
> I lead hikes in the local Santa Ana Mountains, and there is not a single
> person who hikes here, not even those from Europe or those who personally
> invented the metric system, who thinks of peak  elevations in meters. The
> guides and the maps are all in feet, the surveying markers are in feet, as
> are the topo maps.
>
>
>
> This is just a fact of life even if we all [including me] agree that
> Americans are foolish for not adopting the metric system.
>
>
>
> An obvious thought is to enter the elevation including the units, so
> Sierra Peak would show as “3045 feet” rather than “928”, but this won’t
> work.
>
>
>
> The wiki page for the “ele” key defines the tag as meters, so it’s
> reasonable to expect that some software out there relies on this, and it
> would have no provisions to convert anything on the fly because it ought to
> expect numeric meters.
>
>
>
> But even with this aside, that still doesn’t solve the rendering problem:
> I believe that page tiles are rendered as images, so it’s got to pick *
> *something** for the text, and I don’t think there’s any way of having a
> user preference to show these things in local units.
>
>
>
> My suspicion is that there is no easy fix here, but I think a discussion
> is in order. I’ve added a section to the key:ele page that touches on this,
> not so much to propose a solution, but to let others with this same issue
> know that it’s seen as an issue.
>
>
>
> Ref: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:ele#Local_Units
>
>
>
> Is this kind of thing suitable for the key:ele page?
>
>
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Stephen J Friedl  | Security Consultant | UNIX Wizard | 714 345-4571
>
> steve at unixwiz.net | Southern California | Windows Guy |  unixwiz.net
>
>
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