[OSM-talk] A post box called Breuningsweiler

[David Earl]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org
> [mailto:talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org]On Behalf Of Simon Hewison
> Sent: 25 May 2007 13:40
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] A post box called Breuningsweiler
>
>
> David Earl wrote:
>
> > The remaining 50 or so are apparently borrowing nodes to apply place to
> > rather than creating a node for the purpose. These are all
> sorts of nodes,
> > but the effect is to imply that various amenities and other
> features have
> > names. For example, there's a post box called Breuningsweiler, a mini
> > roundabout called Birchington and a set of traffic signals
> which are graced
> > by the name Friern Barnet!
> >
>
> No, you found a town called Friern Barnet, the centre of which
> happens to be a
> road junction that has traffic signals. The town is in Barnet, London,
> England, United Kingdom.
>
> You also found a town called Birchington, the centre of which
> happens to have
> a road junction with a mini roundabout.
>
> If you are route planning, isn't it better to be able to route
> directly to a
> node with the name you are trying to get to, rather than route to
> the nearest
> node that is part of a highway that happens to be somewhere
> adjacent to the
> place you are trying to get to?


Almost no one (i.e. all the other places except those I found) has done it
this way. It's not usual practice, and therefore it is going to cause
problems. Equally, no route planner can behave as you suggest because the
majority of places aren't done this way (and what if I'm navigating to a
pub, does that have to be conected with the highway too? And in any case
navigating to a place doesn't mean ending up at some arbitrary spot that
someone happens to have chosen to represent the place, which is a much
larger area in practice).

We really should do it one way or the other, and in this case the de-facto
verdict is that one has separate nodes for places and other amenities.

There are post boxes with names (people have tagged them with name set to
the id that is printed on the post box label). So if a post box is reused as
a place, the name must apply to both, unless we define it not to with some
complicated rule which is "if a is b and c then the name only applies to b
but it can apply to c if there is no b"

Same is true of traffic signals. How is a consumer supposed to know that the
name applies to the place tag, not the highway tag. highway=traffic_signals;
name='Lazy Dog Interchange'.

ANYTHING can have a name in our present scheme. Unless we change the rules.
But if we don't stick to the conventions we've got, we end up with chaos.
(Like the place=wood discussion on the other thread).

David