[OSM-talk] Tagging hierarchies (was: RFC - lake)

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Sat Jan 12 15:28:03 GMT 2008


Hi,

> > I'm not saying that "natural=water" should be deprecated. I'm just
> > saying that if someone wants to introduce a tagging for lakes or other
> > *special* kinds of water, then there is no technical requirement to tag
> > everything that is tagged with the new lake tag (say, water=lake) as
> > natural=water *also*, because the fact that "water=lake implies
> > natural=water" could be stored externally.
> 
> No, that's the wrong approach.

Care to elaborate?

> Do not "break" existing software (in this case renderers). For the
> time being, you also must tag every water area as "natural=water".

It's not like I was suggesting to make a change *now*. I just objected
to the notion that for the sake of programs processing OSM data, every
single object should carry with it a full hierarchy, instead of making
that hierarchy available and one central source.

("This is a crib barn, which in case you didn't know dear renderer, is
a type of barn, which in case you didn't know dear renderer, is a type
of building, which in case you didn't know dear renderer, is a
man-made object...")

The advantage of storing hierarchy with every single object is of
course that you can use any number of hierarchies at the same time and
even invent new ones for every object you map. But I don't assume that
this would make things *easier* for the renderer ;-)

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'





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