[OSM-talk] Name vs name tag (case sensitivity)

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

Ben Ward wrote:
> 
> Just a thought, but is there a great deal of point in having
> case-sensitive keys? 

Case sensitivity is not something that is chosen in a system design,
it's just what happens. It takes programming effort to get rid of. A
computer has no idea that the letter "I" and the letter "i" have
anything in common whatsoever until the programmer tells it that they do.

It's much easier in our case to just mandate all key names and all
predetermined key values (like highway="motorway") be lower case. If we
actually allow mixed case in the system, all the renderers would have to
check for it.

We can write things into the and/or editors or the backend to enforce
this, or we can just ignore it and tell users to remember, and
everything will work.

> Can anyone think of a situation where it's more
> useful than it is confusing to have two keys with the same name, but
> differing case?

No. That's why you mustn't allow them.  As it is now, a key name in a
different case /is/ a completely different name, therefore there is no
room for that confusion. "Name" is not the name of an object, it's an
error. Only "name" is the name of an object.

If things were programmed to be case insensitive, then we could get
different case names for the same key (on different objects), and
renderers could get confused.

Robert (Jamie) Munro


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