[OSM-talk] Fwd: Re: highway=unsurfaced

Rik van der Helm rik at the-quickest.com
Mon Oct 1 12:04:14 BST 2007


I am another non-native speaker puzzling about track, path and trail.

<Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk> said:
> >Ok, here is another problem for a non-native English speaker: I don't 
> >understand the difference between a track and a path at all. Wikipedia 
> >doesn't seem to help either, according to the page for "path", it may 
> >refer to a "track", and "track" may mean "Trail, an informal road or 
> >pathway" ("pathway" being a synonym for "path", I guess...)
> 
> A path is a narrow pedestrian (and perhaps horse and bicycle) route 
> typically no more than about three feet across. Typically the surface is 
> soil or concrete.

Is this your/osm's definition of 'path' or the linguistic definition of
'path' ? How do you mention an unpaved path ? Is this probably a 'trail'
? The dutch linquistic meaning of path (= pad) doesn't imply anything
about the kind of surface. It can be both paved and unpaved. Our
translation of trail i think is 'spoor'. In my eyes a 'spoor' is a path
without or with minimal traces in the field.

Regards, Rik




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