[OSM-talk] keys

[Andy Robinson]

The discussions over the last few days about keys and values raised an
important point which I don't think has been really looked at before.

Currently there is no convention for the format of a key other than what is
already in use and that does not necessarily help with the management of
tagging (when received from the database) as the database grows. The more
keys that are generated the more complicated the analysis or rendering of
those keys will be.

I think to a large extent we need a coding perspective on this. For those
editing data its easy to use whatever convention there is, provided it is
both logical (and by that I also mean easy to understand and relate to for
non-coders) as well as sufficiently flexible to enable any extension of use
that a user may wish.

A few ideas were floating around in the previous emails, including the use
of Namspace referencing (which I think is a good idea), although guidance on
namespace use between keys and values is required. Personally I would prefer
to avoid coding type convention unless that's hidden under the hood of the
editng software. What the user should see (if there is anything to see at
all) should be obvious and descriptive.

I did not put the "value" part of the equation into this discussion as I
think that's where the full flexibility should always be, albeit that the
project may wish with time to adopt a default set of values to go with
certain default keys.

Anyway, this hopefully opens up the discussion. Suggest that ideas are noted
on the extra "keys" section I just added to:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Key_Value_System

Cheers,

Andy

Andy Robinson
Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk