[OSM-talk] [tech/API] Accessing tags set by a user for traces

[Karl Newman]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Tom Hughes <tom at compton.nu> wrote:

> Guilhem Bonnefille wrote:
>
> > I'm working on Viking[1], a GPS desktop application with OSM related
> features.
> >
> > In order to assist user when uploading its traces to OSM, I wish to
> > contact OSM, retrieve the previously used tags, and propose these tags
> > to the user for the new trace.
> >
> > Is there such API actually?
>
> No, and I don't think one would be practical. To start with we don't
> currently normalise the tags at all so there is lots of duplication in
> the tag table - the only way to get a list of tags is to select distinct
> on the tag column.
>
> Scale wise we have about 250,000 tag records currently, and even if you
> remove the duplicates there are about 40,000 or so. I don't think people
> are going to want to download 40,000 tags even if we wanted to let them.
>
> Tom
>

What about getting a list of tags that the user had previously used? (i.e.,
SELECT DISTINCT ... WHERE UID = ...). That's certainly smaller than 40,000.
Or maybe not even select distinct, so the client could sort by most commonly
used tags.

By the way, to Guilhem, thank you for your very cool app, but could you
please release a Windows binary when you release new versions? I haven't
been motivated enough to set up a ming installation to compile my own.

Sincerely,

Karl
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