[OSM-talk] note= vs note=

[Mike Collinson]

At 02:18 PM 31/07/2007, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>This is kind of a 'Proposed Features' point, but I'm unhelpfully only  
>identifying a problem rather than a solution, because I'm not enough  
>of a tag guru to do the latter:
>
>The "note" tag appears to be used for two purposes.
>
>Sometimes, it's general information about the node/way in question  
>which doesn't fit into the existing tagspace. For example, "note=built  
>in 1785", or "note=formerly a tunnel, now opened out", or "note=my  
>mate Dave was sick here".
>
>Other times, it's a surveyor's note. For example: "note=formerly  
>tertiary but there's no way anything more than a small car could fit  
>down here", "note=I've done this from memory so the road number might  
>be wrong", "note=you should draw tunnels as a solid line and use these  
>tags, don't draw the dashes individually", etc.
>
>The former might often be rendered on a public-facing map (maybe as a  
>tooltip for a webmap), the latter shouldn't be.
>
>I think it'd be really helpful to differentiate the two tags. info= vs  
>tag=, maybe? 

A description= tag was recently voted through to address this problem with older data.

note=  Some note to self or fellow mappers
description=   Text meant to be potentially viewable to the end user - such as a search system or a map with pop-ups

Mike