[OSM-talk] Advanced highway tagging

[Thomas Walraet]

Karl Newman wrote:
>
>> All commercial online maps decide which roads are major and which are
>> minor on a subjective basis.
>
> I would bet that they actually are derived from some objective
> factors; those factors just may not be known or obvious.

I'm not so sure. On common printed map, everything seems decided by a 
cartographer (what to draw, where to put the names, etc.). On online 
maps this is probably decided roughly by an algorithm but with the 
addition of manual hinting.

Doing this automatically from OSM data could be a nice end-project for a 
student.

I think that the best thing to do (for general purpose map) is to decide 
what to draw based on the density of wider road in the proximity. Even a 
track could be important and has to be drawn on large scale maps if 
there's no paved road on the region.