[Talk-us] Elevation in local units

[Mike N]

On 3/25/2015 1:43 AM, Bryce Nesbitt wrote:
> Parsers are cheap.  Any parser worth using can convert 22m, 22 m, 22
> feet or a variety of reasonable variants.
> Humans are messy.  Forcing them into boxes generally goes badly.

  For a bit of history - having speed limits allow a fixed format of

  [Number][Space]mph

   made great sense for the same reasons.   There was some pushback from 
data consumers and renderers.   At least one person didn't like this at 
all.  And nearly every tool which would render speed on reference maps 
or devices did not function for road maxspeeds specified in this manner 
until one or several revisions later - up to a delay of several years.

   Parsers make this task simple, but in practice OSM data is processed 
by loading into a database and querying numeric fields as numbers.  That 
process can be modified, but again it will take some time.

    My input is to allow mappers to work with local units, but modify 
editors to add the feature of specifying in feet.  The editor would 
continue to interface to OSM in the original units.   This has the 
advantage of displaying any existing mapping to the editor in feet.