[OSM-talk] tagging and rendering

[Cartinus]

On Friday 09 May 2008 11:27:21 elvin ibbotson wrote:
> Much debate centres around the way features are tagged and how they  
> are rendered (for example recent discussion of golf course tagging,  
> the term 'highway', rendering power lines,...) and it seems that much  
> of this is inextricably involved with the OSM data itself. I  
> wondered if it was time, while OSM is still relatively young and  
> before it becomes too ossified and institutionalised, for the  
> approach to be reviewed.
>
> My own thoughts, for what they are worth, are that the data structure  
> should be language/locale agnostic. 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 (10 being  
> reserved for some not-yet-invented super highway, after all some of  
> us were here before motorways).
>
> The editors used to input data (Potlatch, JOSM, whatever) would hide  
> this structured data from the user and translate it to/from human  
> language. One immediate advantage is that a German user could tag an  
> autobahn rather than a motorway and global users would not have to  
> use language clearly derived from the British motorway/trunk road/A/B  
> (and little-known C) road classification system. Instead, local  
> nomenclature would be mapped (no pun intended) to the underlying data  
> structure by the local edition of the editor. Highways are an obvious  
> example we are all familiar with, but the principle would apply to  
> all feature types. Places of worship could be mapped as cathedrals,  
> churches, chapels, etc in Britain or as mosques, temples, shrines,  
> whatever in the east.

Problem you are trying to solve:
Discussion about tag names

Proposed solution:
Make tags numerical and have translations from numbers to names for multiple 
languages.

Probable effect:
The same discussion about the translations as before about the tag names, but 
now multiplied by the number of supported languages.

-- 
m.v.g.,
Cartinus