[OSM-talk] Numbers and i18n

[Etienne]

On 7/31/06, Dean Earley <dean at earlsoft.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Etienne wrote:
> >> On 7/31/06, *Joerg Ostertag* <openstreetmap at ostertag.name
> >> <mailto:openstreetmap at ostertag.name>> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Monday 31 July 2006 07:35, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> >>> Andrew Loughhead wrote:
> >>>> For me one difficulty, which I see as a barrier to entry, is
> >>>> the tag system. There was a really good post a couple of months
> >>>> ago explaining the UK etymology of "highway". So it now kind of
> >>>>  makes sense to me that tags like highway=footpath exist.
> >>>
> >>> Since we now have a complete mess with some highway=footpath and
> >>> some class=motorway, that needs to be cleaned up anyway, perhaps
> >>> this is a good time to introduce numbers instead? If the database
> >>>  only stored type=14, then the user interface could show this as
> >>> Motorway, Autostrada or Highway, depending on the user's
> >>> preferred language (en.UK, it, or en.US).
> >>
> >> Sounds like a nice idea to me. But we would need some kind of
> >> central XML File coming with the introduction of this tag.
> >> Something like:
> >>
> >> ...
> >>        <segment type=1>
> >>           <naming lang=en name=Motorway>
> >>           <naming lang=en_US name=Highway>
> >>           <naming lang=de name=Autobahn>
> >>           <rendering color= linewidth=  framing_width=...
> framing_color=
> >>                      dashes=0:0>
> >>           <visibility zoom_min=1000 zoom_max=10000000>
> >>         </segment>
> >>        <segment type=2>
> >>           <naming lang=de name=Bundesstrasse>
> >>           ...
> >>         </segment>
> >>
> >> This would enable us to keep these in sync on all editors and
> >> renderers.
> >
> > motorway != autobahn != freeway
> >
> > For some purposes they can be treated in the same way, but for many
> > purposes they are different.
>
> Can you expand on this?


There are two ways of describing a road.  One is to use its physical
characteristics (number of lanes, width, road surface); the other its
administrative classification (road number, speed limit, restrictions, etc).

I think in this context (Street Maps) we should really be considering
administrative classifications.  OSM can accommodate physical
characteristics but that, to me, seems secondary for the most common kind of
uses of OSM data.

So, assuming we are really considering administrative classifications, then
a road must be classified in accordance with the scheme used by that
region.  It will be a problem for OSM if all grade separated roads without
at-grade intersections (to use an americanised physical description) are
described as highway=motorway.

If Italy decided to ban Horse Boxes and Caravans from all their Autostrada
then it would be quite difficult to make this distinction in OSM, you'd
always have to refer to the national boundaries to decide whether any
particular segment of road was Autostrada or Autoroute or Motorway, or you'd
have to explicitly tag all Italian Motorways with caravan=no.  Either way,
not as easy as tagging it as highway=autostrada in the first place.

For those applications that want to treat all motorways the same then they
would need a table of roads of "motorway standard" (whatever that means in a
global context).  This would be a list of about 250 items if a separate name
is used for each country.

Indeed, according to wikipedia, Autostrada is used in several countries
including Poland and Romania.  So to be totally clear and free from
ambiguity it should be highway=it:autostrada, highway=pl:autostrada, etc.

Etienne
**now wondering about highway=uk:motorway...


I'd have thought that it would be a "fast road between major locations",
> just varying in speed per country.
>
> --
> Dean Earley, Dee (dean at earlsoft.co.uk)
>
> irc:    irc://irc.blitzed.org/
> web:    http://personal.earlsoft.co.uk
> phone:  +44 (0)780 8369596
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