[OSM-talk] Advanced Relationships

[Richard Fairhurst]

Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:

> I don't think anyone denies housenumbers are going require significant
> editor support to make it work. You just can't remove segments without
> providing some alternative for storing the data, because the data
> already exists in the DB now.

How I'd have envisaged house-numbers working is something like this.

Very simply, you tag a node on a way as 'house_number: 50'. You then  
tag a node somewhere further along the way as 'house_number: 70'. So  
if you're looking for house number 60 on that street, it's between the  
two. Of course, someone can also come along and tag a node as  
'house_number: 60', giving more precision. No extra editor support  
required.

Obviously you'd actually want something more descriptive than that.  
House numbers differ on each side of the road, so you might want  
house_number_south and house_number_north or something like that; you  
could also have tags to describe the progression of numbers (odd only  
on one side of the road, even on the other); and so on.

I'm not a Map Features guru, others would be able to devise a much  
better scheme than I could. But I don't see why nodes offer a worse  
solution than segments... yet I may still be being thick.

cheers
Richard