[OSM-talk] Users, contributors and developers

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> Am I missing something here, if we allow the key column to take any  
> format
> of tags separated by colons and the value column separated by  
> semicolons do
> we not get all the flexibility we need without introducing unnecessary
> restriction?

As far as I understood, many people called for the "third column"  
because they were hoping to get rid of the colons. The colons are a  
pain to process in environments where you do not routinely have  
string operations available, e.g. XSLT transformations.

The same, even more so, goes for semicolons in values; you do not  
want to have to check values for semicolons every time you use them.  
If you need a list of things, it is far, far better to somehow find a  
way to tell the database that here is a list of things, than trying  
to encapsulate the list in a string field.

Extrapolating your argument into a nice little strawman, one could  
say "why do we even have keys, let us just put one big text field for  
each way, where people can then write something like  
'highway=residential,name=Brauer Blvd.,...'". Such a scheme would  
offer maximum flexiblity; one could even use that string to enter  
groupings like the one asked for by Spaetz ("highway=residential, 
(restriction=oneway,restriction_valid=8am-8pm), 
(restriction=noaccess...)"). But it would be a nightmare to work with  
that in a renderer or an editor.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'