[OSM-talk] Disappearing footpaths

[Lester Caine]

Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:
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> SteveC wrote:
>> David Earl wrote:
>>>> * to be consistant, shouldn't bridleway be replaced with horseway?
>>>> highway=bridleway tags to horseway :-)
>>>>
>>>> If only we had some way of getting a machine to do this tedious,
>>>>> repetitive work ...
>>> This whole thread has to be an April Fool's joke surely.
>>>
>>> WHY? Why make unnecessary work changing bridleway to horseway?!
>>>
>>> Why on earth bother changing the common term for something to something
>>> nonsensical. And it's just a tag value. It could be wibblewobble as long as
> 
> Absolutely.
> 
>> Not taking sides - but there is one reason, is bridleway the normal term 
>> in Iraq or Germany?
> 
> Tags names and preset values are in British English. We would be crazy
> to try to change that, no matter how bad it is from a politically
> correct point of view, at least not until we can support multiple
> languages simultaneously. The only exception is if there are items that
> only exist in other languages, in which case using the local language is
> fine.
> 
> The only way I can see to do that is to have a layer of abstraction
> between the data users see and what the database calls the tags
> internally. Once we have done that, the internal name may as well stay
> with the English name. Anything else would be lots of work for no gain
> whatsoever.

This is one of the major reasons that XML is simply not a sensible storage 
medium ;)
Scrap the use of full text for all these items and create a simple lookup 
table of values, with sets for each language. The tools then store the number 
and present the user with the currently approved list of values for their 
language.
Solves a number of problems with one simple step?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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