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

[Frederik Ramm]

Ben,

> My proposal in the first email was:
> route_ref=xyz, colour=red
[...]
> In reference to the other 
> reply.  Its not a problem that the route falls along many different 
> ways, as in having a new tag I would just tag the nessesery sections.  
> My concern is how it would render. 

I don't quite understand. How can you tag a way with "route_ref=xyz1" 
and "route_ref=xyz2" at the same time?

> If 2 routes fall along the same path 
> for a period then currently 1 would render ontop of the other, rather 
> than them both being side by side.  The only solution I have is just 
> creating a seperate parrell way for 1 of them.

Of course you *can* have as many ways on top of the same segments in OSM 
as you want, but as you pointed ot yourself, it is a bit tedious working 
with those in JOSM. (Hint: click middle mouse button on segment. A popup 
then shows the ways using that segment. Now press Ctrl. This "freezes" 
the popup, and you can now select a way from the list in the popup.)

But I presume you were speaking of creating a second segment alongside 
the first one, to achieve the desired offset from the other line. I 
strongly advise against this. If there are no two ways on the ground, 
there should be no two segments! To achieve a visible effect you would 
have to draw your segments some 10, 20, maybe even 50 metres away from 
each other.

>> * what if a way is part of two routes at the same time?
>> * where would you, in the case of nature trails and the like, put  
>> general info about the trail (like "approx 1.5 hours")
> 
> If the way is tagged with a handful of tags about its properties the 
> approx time can be worked out.  Tracktype, distance of the ways or if 
> its road/footway etc.  The speeds from these bits can be worked out.  
> The problem is if hills make a majour difference.  If steep hills are
 > marked that covers some of it but really working out journey times
 > needs to use topographic data to work this out.

You were the one who started talking about nature trails. These are 
trails worked out by people who know the area. The same people normally 
publish additional information with these trails - how long it takes to 
walk them, whether they're suitable for children or the eldery or people 
afraid of heights. Now you tell me you want to ditch all this 
information and replace it by something that the computer thinks is 
correct ("oh wait, there's a steep slope here, so let's put 'suitable 
for elderly=no', and here the path seems to run along a steep gradient, 
so possibly not suitable for people afraid of heights...")? I don't 
think so.

The way your argument goes, why not ditch nature trails altogehter and 
let the computer work out the suggestions?

 > I don't think superways are a good idea for a long time.  Just having
 > a segment belong to more than 1 way is inposible to handle in JOSM as
 > it is anyway.

Granted, but that was not what I had in mind when I talked about 
"superways". I was thinking about a convenient method to select the ways 
in question with JOSM, then click "create superway", add a few tags like 
"type=nature_trail, name=Black Swamps Woodland Trail", and that's that.

Bye
Frederik

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