[OSM-talk] The Highway tags and other junk Wars

[guy at graviles-reynolds.org]

Quoting Ben Robbins <ben_robbins_ at hotmail.com>:
> 
> >You add a note tag and record the information and request an appropriate 
> >tag such as liable_flooding or laible_rutting, and when approved you update
> 
> >the node/segment and remove the note.
> 
> So people are either 1) going to have to scan threw pages of notes to use a
> 
> map.  which defeate the purpose of a map wich is a visual representation, 
> not a book.  or 2) they look at the render and cant see the notes at all.  
> or 3) the notes are placed on the map, wich looks a complete mess.

The notes are there for your and others reference when editing the data so that 
information is not lost or features deleted whilst suitable tagging and capable 
renderers don't exist. Using non-standard tags is not a solution, as they are 
not understood by anyone other than their creator, and they are never likely to 
get rendered either by the standard renderers. 

There will always be significant amounts of data in the data set which 
will never get rendered, either because they don't need to be or because it 
would be visually confusing to try and place them all on the map, one such 
being the myriad of surfaces that could be attributed to a way. For rendering 
purposes and to keep the map easily readable is is potentially only practical 
to differentiate between paved and unpaved surfaces, but for navigation 
software purposes knowing what the unpaved surface type is has a potential 
impact on whether the way is used and the time that it will take to traverse 
it. Another is the 'is_in' tag, this will never get rendered but it allows 
search engines to different ways named 'High Street' and find the one which is 
in say Hitchin, rather than the ones in Baldock and Stevenage so that the 
correct map can be displayed.

Guy