[OSM-talk] Classifying Ways worldwide (was: Numbers and i18n)

[Nick Whitelegg]

On Thursday 31 Aug 2006 13:44, Wollschaf wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Aug 2006 10:38:12 +0100, Etienne wrote:
> > One problem with the waytype categorisation is that it tries to encode
> > several physical attributes into one value.  It seems to combine the
> > physical width and the number of lanes into one subjective key.
>
> That is indeed a problem. The scheme itself is not very flexible. But it's
> very easy to enter and remember. And - the problem vanishes is if it is
> possible to override the standard values given by the scheme using
> separate tags.

Whilst I agree that we need separate 'width' and 'highway' tags - to describe 
the width of a way and its official classification - I do strongly feel we 
must make sure that any reclassification is backwards-compatible. For example 
we keep the existing 'highway' classifications of motorway, primary, 
secondary, footway, bridleway etc plus the 'rights' classifications of foot, 
horse, motorcar etc, and then add a new 'width' tag. Otherwise re-tagging 
ways is going to be a huge job.

Nick