[Openstreetmap] Re: road names

[Lars Aronsson]

Alex Mauer wrote:

> (though it may be interesting
> to provide co-ordinates for each individual house...). 

This would obviously be "the right thing" to do, and I think we'll 
regret if we start to do it in any other fashion.  In the end we 
might want to have building and house lot boundaries too, but a 
single center coordinate for each entrance (house number) would be 
nice.  You can do great by just having every 10th number or one 
number at every street corner.  But a coordinate for the entrance 
is the data structure I'd recommend.

  No. Street        Lat        Long
  --- -----------   ---------  ---------
  12A Syrengatan    58.407327  15.598719
  12B Syrengatan    58.407232  15.598462
  14A Syrengatan    58.407119  15.598236
  14B Syrengatan    58.407248  15.598075

These coordinates are not in line, because the buildings 12 and 14 
are not in line, but zig-zag along the street, see 
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=58.407232,15.598462&spn=0.004,0.004&t=h&hl=en

Of course, in the real case you wouldn't grab these coordinates 
from Google Maps, but would mark a waypoint with your own GPS 
receiver.  Or take a digital photo of the entrance with the house 
number visible, then use the timestamp to get the coordinate from 
your track log (just upload both images and track log, and the 
server will sort it out).  We'd end up with our own "Block View" 
system, http://www.amazon.com/gp/yp/B00046TK2O/002-4052702-7562444

Now for another thing:

Sometimes a road segment is too long and needs to be split in two, 
either to better adjust it to a curve or because an exit or 
crossing needs to be added.  With today's applet, there is no way 
to split a segment (i.e. insert a new point in the middle), but 
the old one has to be deleted, a new point added, and then two new 
segments added.  Does this mean all the metadata connected to the 
old segment are lost?


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se