[OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

[Andy Allan]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Ben Laenen <benlaenen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 31 August 2008, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Ben Laenen wrote:
>> > This could be very annoying if you're making a way for an area and
>> > at the end suddenly remembers that you should have done it
>> > clockwise and not anticlockwise.
>>
>> Direction is irrelevant for areas. (Coastline currently being an
>> exception.)
>
> Then that's also one of those things that change without it being
> mentioned somewhere.
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Tag:natural=water still says:
>
> "Direction
> This is important for rendering. The direction of the way should be
> chosen such that land is on the left side and water on the right side
> of the way (when viewing in the direction of the way arrows). If you
> regard this as tracing around a lake, then the way(s) should be running
> clockwise. It's easy enough to reverse the direction of a way in
> Potlatch, JOSM, and all good editors."

Fixed.

 "Direction
Since all renderers (hopefully) ensure that you haven't made a polygon
the size of the planet, it doesn't matter which way round the way
goes. "

;-)

Cheers,
Andy