[OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

Ben Laenen benlaenen at gmail.com
Sat Aug 30 16:54:51 BST 2008


On Saturday 30 August 2008, Hugh Barnes wrote:
> So, just to clarify, if I want apply more properties to the bus stop,
> is it like this:
>
> left:highway=bus_stop
> left:name=Park Road
> … etc?
>
> Have I missed something?

Since this shows that we need an "entity" to put all data on which 
wouldn't interfere with other street features on the same node (suppose 
you have a shop and a bus stop at the same location), this makes me 
think more about something I'd call "offset node": I don't know how 
well this could be fit in with relations, but it would be great if 
renderers supported these offset nodes without showing any of the 
relations stuff.

Offset node being defined as: the road the node belongs to, the node 
itself, and the location of the node being defined according to the 
road: situation along the road (like 0.0 being at beginning and 1.0 at 
end) + which side + (in cases where it could be useful) distance from 
the middle of the road.

Now I think of it, this might be impossible with the current API, since 
it needs the concept of a "node" without a geographical location 
defined as longitude/latitude, but it needs to be an entity that can be 
used in relations.

And since I'm brainstorming here, I just thought of it that it still 
might be possible with relations: add a relation to the road, and add 
the parameters from above, and there you have the entity. Needs good 
editor handling though in case you're going to 
split/join/inverse/move/extend/shorten ways...

I think there once was mention of the idea called "offset way" as well 
IIRC, a long time ago, maybe we can look at this properly once.

Anyway, sorry if this doesn't really look thought through, I'm just 
brainstorming as said. But at first sight the idea of "offset node" 
appeals to me.

Greetings
Ben




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