[OSM-talk] Naga City in OSM Re: GML to OSM

[Hakan Tandogan]

On Thu, April 10, 2008 11:33, Andy Allan wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:24 AM, Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>> Looking at the growing mess of wiki pages relating to
>> place/is_in/boundary/relations and the rest I think that I would not be
>> wasting my time now putting together a 'proposal' for good practice for
>>  handling the simple hierarchy of is_in but it does need a means of
>> identifying different 'Naga City' objects other than adding 'Camarines
>> Sur, Luzon,
>> Philippines' to every use of it :(
>>
>
> is_in is a short-term kludge. It's almost completely unnecessary when -
> and only when - we have boundaries for whatever the larger area is.
> Sometimes it's useful* when you don't.

I agree that is_in is a short-term solution. We need a lot more boundary
data, not only for complete countries, but for cities, towns, and more.
And after that, we need relations that explain that the boundaries of
towns A, B and C define the boundary for city X. And that cities X, Y and
Z define country Q.

I'd love to have that kind of data, but I can't see yet where we might get
that from. On the other hand, getting the mapper to enter a proper "is_in"
tag is far easier.

> (whether derived from OSM or VMAP0 or wherever) then I can

Yes, that "whereever" is the interesting word here...

> tell you if a given amenity=pub is in that country. No need for any
> relations or is_in tags AT ALL.

I don't doubt your reasoning that borders would be far better than is_in,
but sometimes you have to resort to "kludges" to get something off the
ground *today* instead of some at future date when we have perfect data
(which might even not be available, do you really expect the Chinese
government to hand over boundary data for its cities?)


Regards,
Hakan

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