[Talk-us] Careful, "st" can mean "stone" in some places | Re: Typical maxweight signs in USA? (editor developmnent question)

[Rory McCann]

On 25/06/2019 20:01, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
> 25 Jun 2019, 17:47 by peter at dobratz.us:
>> Reading this page, I see the potential ambiguity extends deeper than
>> I realized (short ton, metric ton, long ton)
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne
> 
> AFAIK all cases of "t" in USA on max weight signs means "short ton".
> 
> Taggable by adding "st" unit or by converting to pounds, and adding 
> "lbs" unit.
> First seems to be superior as puts lower burden on mappers and it allows 
> to directly map what is signed.
> See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:maxweight#Usage

FYI "st" is used in Britain & Ireland to mean a "stone" ( 14 pounds i.e. 
6.35029318 kg ). People in UK & Ireland can refer to their weight as "X 
stone", or "I've lost half a stone on my diet" (but kg is common too).

If you use "st" in an OSM tag value for weight, a not very bright data 
consumer might interpret that as stone. Maybe we can side-step that 
problem by picking a better suffix?

What about "uston" (maxweight=8 uston)?

Are there other regions which use “ton/tonne/...” on signs which 
*aren't* the US ton? If so, we could just say “t” means “us short ton”.

“Gallons” is also different in US units & imperial units, so "usgal" or 
"impgal" are better choices than "gal". (Relevant when mapping fire 
hydrant flow rates).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)