[OSM-talk] Deprecation/move of incorrect tags

Alex Mauer hawke at hawkesnest.net
Tue Jul 17 08:47:28 BST 2007


Ian Sergeant wrote:
> Matthias Julius wrote:
> 
>> You can tag it
>> highway=footway
>> foot=no
>> route=ski
> 
> Alex Mauer <hawke at hawkesnest.net> writes:
> 
>> That falls under "ugly hack", and is at best a workaround.  It doesn't
>> solve the problem raised, that there's no way to tag a generic or
>> shared-use path, particularly one that's not a legally a UK highway.
> 
> Alex, I think what you are saying is that "highway=" tag was probably not
> the best choice to indicate a path for bikes, pedestrians, horses or
> skiers, because strictly speaking these things aren't highways.

Yes, that's approximately what I'm saying.  The problem comes in because
in the UK these things (ski trails aside) *are* highways.  The OSM
"highway" tag is defined according to UK law, so it contains a few
things that make sense in the UK and not in other places.

> To be consistent with the current OSM philosphy, I would argue that:
> 
> highway=ski_trail - as a through way for skiiers.
> 
> if people are also allowed to traverse it should also have
> 
> foot=yes.
> 
> I notice that the route=ski has already been accepted as a tag for a way.
> As far as I'm concerned that is slightly inconsistent usage between route
> and highway, but its easy to understand why it evolved that way, as ski
> trails in most parts of the world aren't usually seen as through ways.
> However, I can see how in parts of Canada they may well be.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by a "through way" -- but for purposes
of a map I don't think it would matter much.

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