[OSM-talk] tagging trailblazes / marked paths

[Alex Mauer]

Andy Allan wrote:
> highway tag with more than 100 instances. You can see that the
> highway=footway/cycleway/bridleway/pedestrian totals 509,920 instances
> (path has a respectible, but tiny by comparision, 2165). And everyone

Meh, bridleway/cycleway/footway have been around for at least 2 years,
path's been around for  what, a few months?  Pedestrian's not in the
same class at all though, so make that 425756.  Not that it reduces your
point much.

> of renders, routing algorthims and whatnot understand and use them
> too.

Routing algorithms need to understand the access tags anyway, so no real
change there.  Renderers should as well (without bringing path into it,
it's good to show highway=cycleway+foot=yes on a specialized foot map.)

> So what are the advantages of the change? One scheme that covers the
> corner cases along with the most common occurences. And the
> disadvantages? Confusion for many contributors, every data user
> needing to understand two sets of tagging styles, the most common

What are these two sets of tagging styles? I only see one new value, not
a whole new style.

> cases (the 509k) needing twice as many tags as before, and the corner
> cases are still fairly corner needing a small handful of tags. So in

Incorrect.  You neglected to account for the existing tags on those
509k/425k.  There's actually a net gain (reduction) in the number of
tags needed.  The simplest cases (cycleway/footway/bridleway) are
identical, obviously.  But now a specialty route which is not a c/f/b is
both more intuitive (no highway=footway+foot=no needed) and requires
fewer tags (highway=path + snowmobile=designated instead of
highway=footway + foot=no + snowmobile=designated for example).

At worst, there is only one additional tag needed, not "twice as many",
and that's only if you choose to use highway=path for something which is
also a c/f/b.

And of course, non-designated paths (2nd-4th, 6th and 9th on
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Tag:highway%3Dpath/Examples for
example) are now only one tag instead of two, as well as being much more
intuitive.

> proposed upheaval and/or dual tagging regimes is overkill. A way to
> tag the corner cases that don't fit in well would have been much
> preferable.

Upheaval?  Dual-tagging regime?  Neither have happened here:  c/f/b are
still perfectly viable, and highway=path simply adds a generic path
alongside the existing specific-use paths.

And IMO if someone knew of a less disruptive, more intuitive change to
make, they should have mentioned it during the 6 months that the
proposal was in the wiki.  Not that I think anything could describe a
non-specific-use path in a less disruptive way than highway=path.

-Alex Mauer "hawke"