[OSM-talk] RFC - lake

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On Jan 12, 2008 4:45 AM, Robin Paulson <robin.paulson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >it seems a logical one to me, we need to differentiate between lakes
> > >and rivers, canals, etc.
<snip>
> > duplicates natural=water which is very, very widely used - 9421 times
>
> no problem, they can all be changed very simply i should think.

To provide some counter-weight: 99% of of things don't care about
whether it's a lake/reservoir/canal/river. Hence I would suggest a
top-level tag natural=water for *all* land/water boundaries (except
sea I suppose) and a seperate tag waterbody=lake/foo/bar to
differentiate.

I suppose you could say: Won't somebody please think of the renderers!

The world has an infinite diversity and we can't go inventing new tag
combinations for all of them. We need to think hierarchically, start
with the real defining characteristics: land/sea/road/rail/etc and use
subtags for the finegrained stuff. Let's face it: 99% of users won't
care about what the body of water is used for, so there's no reason
why it should be a top-level tag. It's also more flexible, because
then people can invent their own waterbody=foo combinations without
worrying that people won't know what it means.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at gmail.com> http://svana.org/kleptog/