[OSM-talk] Tagging hierarchies

[Andy Allan]

On Jan 14, 2008 4:29 AM, Karl Newman <siliconfiend at gmail.com> wrote:

> For that matter, I wish all closed ways which designate an area were marked
> as such. I'm working on writing a tiling task for Osmosis which will carve
> up data into rectangular grids (for feeding into GPS map creators such as
> mkgmap). It has to treat closed ways differently than linear features (hard
> clip them with synthetic nodes right at the boundaries and link the clipped
> parts together). Without a universal tag such as area=yes designating a way
> as a polygon (simply having a closed way is not sufficient--witness
> roundabouts), the tiling task will have to know about every type of tag
> which implicitly designates a polygon. Then when a new implicit polygon tag
> is added, the task won't correctly treat it as a polygon until it's told
> about it. We really could use a generic method for designating polygons.

To be honest, extra work for processors/renderers that saves work for
thousands and thousands of other contributors adding unnecessary tags
is, I'm afraid, one of the things we need to live with.

If you want to argue for another primitive type in addition to lines
and nodes, that's a different matter. But extra tagging isn't going to
happen, especially with so many other renderers getting along without
it.

Cheers,
Andy