[OSM-talk] tagging and rendering

[elvin ibbotson]

On 9 May 2008, at 14:51, Vincent MEURISSE wrote:

>>
> You can look at merkaartor. It implement something like that. When you
> draw a road, it show up a translated list for the tags. I thing that
> an editor must hide tags for most usages to avoid tagging errors and
> allows power users to change row tags.

agreed

>
>> For example, ways could have a
>> numeric type field with, hypothetically, 10-19 being used for roads.
>> In this scenario 11 might be a UK motorway, an Italian autostrada or
>> an American interstate, while 19 might be a rough track
>
> And why use tags at all. We can use highway=1 railway=2 amenity=3
> name=4. Then we will renouce to xml format and use a binary one and
> then close the source of osm software.
> Seriously we use xml. The principle of xml is to be human readable and
> use text attribute. If there is any tagging facility and tags
> translation, it's the job of the editor.
>

I'm sure you must know of the binary data proposal. I have developed  
a mobile OSM viewer which uses the bitmap tiles - slow and big for  
mobile devices. But XML data is way bigger! There is a great deal to  
be said for a binary format. But the future is probably XML. I have  
no objection to tags with words (they are inevitable anyway for such  
things a names) provided they chosen to allow things like level-of- 
detail filtering and future growth, and are (as you say) separated  
from the user by the editor.

elvin