[Openstreetmap] Extending GPX to include track type information?

[Nick Whitelegg]

Hello,

Relating to this track type thing again, and with particular relevance for 
countryside walking maps.... one thing I'm coming up with in track-editing 
GPS tracks is that GPX does not allow you to specify the type of track 
segments. This is of interest to me in the application I'm writing as I want 
the user to be able to load in GPX data from a GPS, then divide the track 
into segments of different types (footpath, bridleway, cycle path etc) which 
can either then be sent to OpenStreetMap, or (relating to this post) saved to 
GPX for later reloading.

The problem is GPX does not allow specification of track segment types. I'm 
getting round this by using GPX's ability to add extensions within the 
<extensions> tag, and adding a table of segment types, and start and end 
trackpoints, within the extensions  tag i.e.

<extensions>

<!-- This segment starts at track point 3, ends at track point 7, and has type 
1 (my current type definition for footpath though could be changed to a more 
textual form as per the other thread... -->

<segdef>
<start>3</start>
<end>7</end>
<type>1</type>
</segdef>

<segdef>
....
etc

This works (and could be easily extended to multiple tracks in the same GPX 
file) but is maybe a tad clunky. I want to keep GPX (rather than a more 
complex format) as it's simple and lightweight but just wondering what 
others' approaches would be?

Thanks,
Nick