[OSM-talk] Announcing name searches for OSM

[David Earl]

interleaved...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org
> [mailto:talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org]On Behalf Of Daniel Fischer
> Sent: 08 May 2007 07:35
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Announcing name searches for OSM
>
>
> Christoph Eckert wrote:
> > But there are not only german umlauts. what's with other locations like
> > Århus in Denmark? Maybe the single character replacement is the most
> > 'general' idea.
> >
> Danish and Norwegian can be transliterated as follows:
>
> Å å - Aa aa
> Ø ø - Oe oe
> Æ æ - Ae ae


The first and last are already there. I have Ø as O at present (some Danish
colleagues had in the past described Ø to me as an entirely separate letter
that didn't have a direct equivalent, but from what you say, they were
wrong), but see below. I know from working in Denmark that Å and Aa are used
interchangably, and never as just 'a', though for consistency with umlauts
based on appearance (see below) maybe I should support that too.


> The transliteration for å above plus the German transliterations for ö
> and ä work for Swedish.

good

> I think it can't be too hard to make a list, given that you can just ask
> someone who's mapping an area with suspiciously looking characters :-)


indeed. It is all table driven so I can add them as they arise.


> Note that this will be an n:n relationship in the end, some characters
> are transliterated differently in different areas, e.g. ñ is written ng
> in Spanish, ny in Catalan, nh in Portuguese...


That's the one I was worried about.

However, I worked out during my sleep how to manage more than one
alternative like this, so I'll be able to make
Koln (for convenience on non accented keyboards) and Koeln (for precision)
match Köln for example, and n, ny, nh and ñ all as equivalents (but añbñc
will have to be consistently equivalenced so anybnyc will match and anhbnhc
but not anybnhc). Coming soon.

David.