[OSM-talk] How do I tag this road in OSM

[Wollschaf]

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:24:53 +0200, Christoph Burghardt wrote:

> Can someone please come up with a good definition of what a way is in
> osm? What are they good for? Are ways used in any calculation?

I understand ways of a method to easily add tags that a lot of segments
have in common, mainly to assign a name and ref. Tags in specific segments
should override the values given in the way.

Ways are also a method to apply several - otherwise incompatible - tags to
one specific set of segments, i.e. a road that includes a cycleway and
tram tracks, perhaps a bus route and which is part of a hiking route. It
would be pointless (and rather chaotic) to create segments all on
the same spot, facing in the same direction.

Software using OSM data will be faster if ways can be used to simplify
things; A map renderer will have a hard time figuring out where to print
street names without ways: every segment has to be looked at, and followed
until a different name comes up. Imagine a route planner that would have
to look at every segment on a motorway. Assumptions can be made looking at
ways and later verified using the segments.

Ways are broken at the moment, at least longer ones; See
http://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/214

> But after creating a way in JOSM - my favorite editor at the moment -
> it's not possible to add information to the segments anymore without
> deleting and recreating the way.

Actually, it is. Use the third (middle) mouse button to click on the
segment, hold the CTRL-Key down and select the segment.

It's not very comfortable to to this for several segments in a row,
though. Selection modes would be a neat addition, a feature to select
only nodes, segments or ways.

Wollschaf