[OSM-talk] Parking symbols: YUCK!

[J.D. Schmidt]

Lester Caine skrev:
> 
> Again - the fact that people are giving time to enter data is precisely why we 
> need to be producing a guide to how to do things that is consistent. If people 
> are going to tidy up these 'couple of problems' then we don't want one person 
> deleting a node and another adding it back because they are looking at 
> different views of the same data :(
> *ALSO* we also don't need people wasting time making the renderers play silly 
> tricks to make things look right. Lets just be consistent in how things are 
> handled. What ever the inconsistency!
> 


You need to look at it differently. From the view you are putting forth 
above, you seem to equalize the rendered output in the form of Mapnik 
and Osmarender maps to Openstreetmap. And I can see why, since those two 
  items produce the currently most visible part of OSM.

BUT remember, the DB is one thing, the rendering of data from the db is 
another thing altogether. Look at the db as a big sea of data, where it 
is your (the rendering engine) task to harvest the data that you want to 
render. Not to impose rules and limitations on what form the data in the 
DB is entered in.

IMHO one of the reasons why OSM has gained such "notoriety" and 
following among neogeographers, established carthographers, and 
joe-public alike, is the fact that it is not a mapproducing framework 
bound by strict and defined ISO-like rules, but a framework that is more 
akin to social networking for the map-inflicted.

If the two rendering engines used currently differ in the way they 
render said data, then its the rendering rules used in those engines 
that need to be put into sync. Its not done by imposing limitations or 
strict rules on what can/should be put into the DB.

If one person observed a parking lot, but didn't have time to log the 
boundaries of the lot, and just placed a node with the corresponding 
tag, then later another person comes along and logs the boundary of the 
parking lot, and puts an area out of that data into the DB, he shouldn't 
delete the node another person made. Maybe that person is using the data 
from the DB to keep a POI record of parking lots. He might be the only 
one doing so, but thats still one of the forces of the OSM project - Log 
it, tag it, put it into the DB - even if you are the only person ever 
going to use that data.

So IMHO it's up to the rendering engines to render the data smartly. 
It's not the rendering engines that decide what should be put into the DB.

Dutch