[OSM-talk] highway=unsurfaced

[Mike Collinson]

At 09:49 PM 30/09/2007, Tapio Sokura wrote:
>Steve Chilton wrote:
>> I have added highway=unsurfaced to the Map Features page as it is in use by many mappers, and has been rendered by Osmarender for a while now.
>
>I guess this has been mentioned before, but we really should aim for 
>accurately and orthogonally tagging properties of map objects, instead 
>of (ab)using tags to make the map look pretty in the short term. So far 
>highway tags have been used for describing road importance (or general 
>type, if not a road for cars). Now we have the same tag describing 
>physical properties of the road itself.
>
>Finland is one of those countries, where a large part of the secondary 
>road network is unpaved. I can't see how to meaningfully tag it other 
>than highway=secondary, surface=unpaved. And a small unpaved road would 
>logically be highway=unclassified, surface=unpaved.
>
>Anyway I'm just voicing my opinion from the bushes. Those who code, code 
>however they like to code and that's just the way it is with voluntary work.
>
>   Tapio


I agree with Tapio.  highway=xxxx, surface=paved/unpaved has been on the Map Features page and well used for a long time now.  By all means have a render rule for a depreciated highway=unsurfaced but it has no place on the Map Features page and is just plain confusing for any country that has unsurfaced roads in its system.  There is, harumph, harumph, a voting procedure for new feature proposals :-) .

Mike
Stockholm