[OSM-talk] Tagging: Rural and urban paths

matthew-osm at newtoncomputing.co.uk matthew-osm at newtoncomputing.co.uk
Fri Nov 3 17:26:46 GMT 2006


On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 04:31:47PM +0000, Nick Whitelegg wrote:
> I think it would be a good idea to distinguish between town and 
> countryside paths in OSM. This would allow Freemap-npe to show only 
> countryside maps, without the odd effect of showing paths which apparently 
> end in the middle of nowhere in towns, due to housing estates unbuilt 50 
> years ago. Also, much like the OS maps, this would allow the production of 
> maps of the order of 1:25000 or 1:50000 scale which show all countryside 
> paths, but which don't show possibly unnecessary detail in towns. 
> 
> Not sure how this would fit in to the upcoming new Map Features but I can 
> think of a couple of ways of doing this. A quick way which wouldn't 
> involve changing existing tagging would be simply to add 'rural=true' to 
> existing paths. Alternatively, one could distinguish at the hgihway tag 
> level, e.g. highway=footway for town paths or highway=path for rural 
> paths.
> 
> Thoughts?

Currently depends on existance of foot= tag, I believe.

  highway=footway implies it is something to walk along.

  foot=yes implies that it is a public footpath

Therefore, a footpath in town would not (necessarily) have foot=yes (most are
not actually "public footpaths" as such, but in the country most would.

I guess "foot=permissive" may be the confusing matter with this, though.

-- 
Matthew




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