[OSM-talk] Name finder: "Budapesterplatz" vs. "Budapester platz"

[David Earl]

On 17/08/2007 01:00, Ulf Lamping wrote:
> David Earl schrieb:
>> On 17/08/2007 00:16, Ulf Lamping wrote:
...
>> While I'm at it, what kind of abbreviation is common in these cases? 
>> Do people write Hauptbahnstr for Haupbahnstrasse or Hauptbahnstraße? 
> Difficult to say what "people" do ;-) AFAIK the correct term is 
> Hauptbahnstraße (laut german Duden, which is the "normative reference").
> 
> However, I guess for a search engine it's a good idea to be able to find 
> all three forms, as none of them is completely uncommon. BTW: another 
> possibility would be "Hauptbahnstr.".


That's what I was getting at. It already will find Haupbahnstrasse for 
Hauptbahnstraße, but not Hauptbahnstr for either.


>> Would you ever write Budapesterpl. or would it naturally always be 
>> Budapester Pl. abbreviated, if indeed abbreviation is used at all?
> I personally would always use Budapesterplatz as a first try - it's the 
> easiest to type. However, having a search engine that will ignore those 
> differences completely would be my personal hero ;-)
> 
> Maybe it's an idea to simply strip off white space and special chars 
> (like '-', '.')?

It already does the latter (indeed better than that, it deals with 
apostrophes intelligently, especially in English). It's spaces that are 
the problem, or rather the way I look for separate words. Anyway, as I 
said, I'll see if I can develop a solution.


> P.S.: While we're at it, some more german specialties that might be 
> interesting to take into account:
> Weg - a small street, sometimes to be used by foot / bicycle only (will 
> be abbreviated with w. or W.)
> Gasse - similiar to Weg, but usually in older towns like Nürnberg (will 
> be abbreviated with g. or G.)

OK, that's easy. I already have the means to add alternate forms of 
words - e.g. Road and Rd are equivalent, so I can simply add w and weg - 
case is irrelevant - and g for gasse (which, correct or not, will also 
automatically match gaße), so I'll just add these to the table in next 
week's update. Note that w is also already an abbreviation for west.

What I won't pick up without solving the space issue is weg or gasse as 
part of a longer word - Nürnberg Weg = Nürnberg W. for example would be 
ok, but not Nürnbergweg = Nürnbergw

David