[OSM-talk] cadastre, ways, rendering

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Tue Jan 23 15:01:04 GMT 2007


Hi,

> The renderer will
> then produce nice maps (and that is what it is all about): it will add
> in the middle of each segment the highway reference, like so:
>
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html? 
> lat=43.7046584805283&lon=7.259499907493593&zoom=15
>
> Actually you don't need to tag both sides of a highway with its
> reference. It will just produce overlapping signs on the map.

I strongly disagree.

It is *not* all about creating nice maps. In the long run, I want our  
data to be a match for (and surpass!) industry-standard routing and  
location data. And if we have to model a motorway as two different  
ways for any reason, then of course both need to be properly tagged.  
(We will soon need a proper concept to deal with such issues; we will  
probably need "superways" - ways consisting of other ways - or  
something like that. None of the current variants of dealing with  
large multi-lane roads is satisfactory.)

Of course I understand that many users tend to employ all sorts of  
tricks to make it somehow look nice on their preferred renderer. They  
would probably map a letterbox in the middle of the road if this  
somehow caused their renderer to create a nicer map, and they'd even  
be proud of it and advise others to do the same. And I cannot blame  
them; that's hacking in its purest and playful sense.

But still, in the long run we want a clean data set which describes  
reality as good as possible, and not something that postulates  
letterboxes in the middle of the road because it gives a nicer  
picture. There's job for those wo make the editors and renderers, and  
those who design the data model - make it so that *correct* mapping  
gives *nice* results so that people needn't resort to hacks.

Bye
Frederik

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






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