[OSM-talk] How do I tag this road in OSM

[Christoph Burghardt]

> 
> You might want to think about it the other way round.  Segments are the
> redundant element.  All they provide is information about the direction
> between two nodes.  Ways can the thought of as multi-segmented paths.

Mmh - this approach has some significant disadvantages for me:

1.) First i set the points, then i connect the segments, after that i
generate a way. How should i construct a way without these prior
informations? 

Until now a segment is the basis for a way, you can't remove it!
agree with you, ways are collection of segments. but you will always need
the segments as a base.

2.) If one tag changes (i.e. class, highway, speedlimit) you have to
generate a second way. In the worst case you have as many ways as
underlying segments. You loose the only significant gain of the ways, the
"fast-index" for group of  segments. 

You will have all the difficulties mentioned earlier with map rendering,
navigation, ..

> When two ways share a segment there is a problem.  The
direction has to  be the same for both ways.  

In my view, i would ignore the underlying direction except the oneway
tag is set. You could omit the oneway tag and instead create a direction
tag for each type of traffic. 

I agree with Wollschafs definition of a way: a method to easily add tags
to a lot of segments. For displaying, the API should combine the tags,
given the most basic unit (the point) override the segments with overrides
a way. 

A segment is a physical representation of the world, with tags like
roadclass, type, bridge, tunnel, footway, speedlimit. So i would apply all
tags of the physical world to a segment

A way is a logical group, like a bus-line, guided tour, think of somethink
like that. 

To return to the question from the topic starter: Put the data in the
segments. After that, group the segments to a way and tag the way with the
name attribute.

> 
> It is likely, IMHO, that segments will be removed rather than ways.  I'm
> contemplating making the next major version of Osmarender ignore
> segments completely (including all segment level attributes).
> 

I must admit, i don't care, because i don't use Osmarenderer. 

Christoph