[OSM-talk] labels for road names and route designations

[Colin Mackay]

Ah... My understanding of what a label is must be wrong. This goes back to
my other mail about the need for a glossary of terms.

My understanding of a label was something like name=M90
Another label might be class=motorway
They would both apply to the same link

But it appears that a label is some sort of amalgamation of all of these.

In terms of using XML, that would be good as a transfer format. But, how is
the data actually held. There doesn't seem to be anything in the wiki about
that. I know there are some servers, but what database system is being used?
Is it specific to this project? There isn't a high level overview about how
all this fits together. There also seems to be some problems when two people
are editing the "same area". Which is a point I was curious about (but, I'll
leave that for another time)

Regards,
Colin.


On 28/02/06, Etienne Cherdlu <openstreetmap-L at gj0.net> wrote:
>
> Colin
> Currently, as I understand it labels are implemented (in some places) as a
> single semi-colon delimited string, eg "class=motorway; name=M1;".
>
> I'd much prefer to go the XML way using elements to identify properties of
> a road, but this can be cumbersome and would take some time to get
> implemented.  Using a comma (or some other character) as a list delimiter
> was a quick and simple proposal to get something that is workable and
> up-and-running straight away.  We can always convert the data to XML when
> the software is ready for it.
>
> I guess we could specify an escaping convention for data that really needs
> to contain a comma.  eg route=A317, NR4, Surrey Cycle Guide\, No 3.
>
> Do you have thoughts on any other options?
>
> Etienne
>
> On 2/28/06, Colin Mackay <colin.mackay at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm not entirely sure a comma separated list would be a good idea. While
> > I cannot see any commas being used naturally as part of a route designation,
> > I can envisage some strangely named street containing commas. If a
> > convention for dealing with this sort of thing is to be used, it must be
> > used consistently throughout otherwise people get confused.
> >
> > In some places in Scotland, and I'm sure around Europe too, there are
> > streets with two names because there are two dominant languages in the area
> > (Scots Gaelic & English for example). There are also examples of dual named
> > streets in Edinburgh where both names are in English.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Colin.
> >
> >
> >  On 28/02/06, Etienne Cherdlu < openstreetmap-L at gj0.net> wrote:
> >
> > >  On 2/27/06, Colin Mackay < colin.mackay at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >     route1=M9
> > > >     route2=M876
> > > >
> > > The xml way of describing this would be:
> > >
> > >   <route>M9</route>
> > >   <route>M876</route>
> > >
> > > As OSM labels perhaps a comma separated list would be sufficient:
> > >   route=M9, M876
> > >
> > > Etienne
> > >
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> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
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