[OSM-talk] Highway tags and other junk

[Andy Allan]

On 12/14/06, Ben Robbins <ben_robbins_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> so it will
> take a LOT of my time to change them, when if this was resolved quickly it
> wouldn't have taken much time at all.

Don't worry, we have spellchecking scripts to change tags in bulk, if
needs be. Generally, if you are worried about it, make sure you use
the most detailed of your ideas, since we can combine tags if
necessary when a standard is decided on.

> it still
> should not be under highway= as a track is not a public right of way in any
> form (like all the other highway tags),

I disagree with your logic. There's nothing about highway = motorway
that implies a right of way - think about toll roads. I see no reason
against using highway=, since everything from motorway to dirt track
is just a sliding scale with arbitrary distinctions (both physical and
especially political) - they are still the same thing if you look at
the bigger picture.

It seems to me that you want to be far more detailed in your
classification of roads/tracks than most people, which isn't
necessarily a bad thing. If I had to make a decision, I would have
highway=track for all track-like things, and your more detailed
suggestions as additional tags.

(While we're on the issue, I would strongly discourage people from
making very specialist single tags simply because adding multiple tags
is tedious. The tediousness is just a user interface issue, and as
things progress I would hope that the specifics of xml tags is buried
behind the UIs. For example,  highway=residential surface=gravel
width=10m whitelines=downthemiddle verges=grass ditches=no or similar
is better than e.g highway=arbitrary16, and is probably much easier to
get agreement across different countries.)