[OSM-talk] Nature Trails (was: No_comments=yes)

[Frederik Ramm]

Ben,

> I have one additional question, but I'll skim over it casue I  
> dought there
> will be a responce.  Trails.  In a wood or where ever there is nature
> trails.*  Has anyone done these?  I considered (route_ref=xyz,  
> colour=red)
> for example.  There is rendering problems with this though, but I  
> won't
> bother listing them.  If no responce then I shall custom tag, but  
> this will
> be a problem at some future point.
>
> *nature trails not being just footpaths.  But usually suggested  
> circular
> walks.

I think that' s a general problem we have, and I don't have a  
solution for it.

A nature trail will usually be a combination of ways. It may,  
sometimes, even contain a little bit of secondary road. So it is not  
a "way" in our sense, and it does not manifest itself on the ground -  
you cannot look at a way and say "oh yes, this must be a nature  
trail". It's more of a logical concept that uses existing ways.

It's as if you were to map the Jubilee Walk in London, or the "London  
to Edinburgh Rail Service". It's all valuable information, but it is  
not something that can reasonably be expressed in an attribute to a  
way. I cannot go and tag every street in London forming part of the  
Jubilee Walk with "jubilee_walk=yes" (to reference your other  
ailment...).

In the long run, we will probably need something like a "superway"  
that can combine multiple ways to form something like a nature trail.

For the time being, I'd recommend using the "annotation" tag with the  
value "Blah Blah Nature Trail".

Bye
Frederik

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