[OSM-talk] Advanced Relationships

[Matthias Julius]

Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> writes:

> If house numbers were halfway standardised in our current database we 
> could think about some way for automatic conversion into something else 
> but I don't see that.
>
> I don't want to start a fight over this, as the abolition of segments is 
> not something I plan to do tomorrow or so. It's just my principal 
> thinking that any future changes in the data model *might* make some 
> things impossible that are possible now, and while we will always try 
> not to throw away valuable information, there is no *automatic* 
> obligation to always support everything that was possible at some time.
>
> (For example, it has just now become impossible to create ways with no 
> segments in them. What if someone devised a cool schema to store 
> interesting information in OSM using empty ways as a vehicle? He's 
> screwed. And nobody has thought of or even implemented alternatives for 
> him!)

I fully agree.

It is great that osm allows to tag anything anyway you want.  But, you
can not assume that everything will work forever the way it works now.

The tagging of segments has been discouraged since a while.  Maplint
and the validator plugin for JOSM warn about them.  I think the API
should not accept tags on segments anymore.

I also think the "official" renderers (Mapnik, t at h) should stick to
the standard and not render things that are not on Map Features.  This
would increase motivation to get things formalized.

Matthias