[OSM-talk] National borders in the British Islands

[Cartinus]

On Thursday 29 May 2008 12:29:05 Dermot McNally wrote:
> I've just fixed the Irish border, which luckily presents no such
> dilemma, as it is an international border, even by non-UK criteria. It
> lacked  admin_level=2.

Shouldn't that be admin_level=1 now, since it is also the outside border of 
the UK. Now that admin_level=2 is used for the internal borders in the UK we 
would need a higher number for the outside borders.

- - - - - - - - - -

All kidding aside I thought that the use of numbers for the admin levels was 
to avoid discussions like this. But clearly tagging for the renderers has won 
again over good data structure.

admin_level=1 is reserved for future use.
admin_level=2 is to be used for the highest level of sovereignty. Since 
neither the UN nor the EU can be called sovereignties, that would be the UK 
anywhere within the UK.
admin_level=4 is used for most major internal divisions (e.g. US states and 
German Bundesländer)

If you really think (which people in the UK obviously do) that Scotland and 
Wales are more "independent" than the parts of the US and Germany then you 
could use admin_level=3 in stead.

Then if you want to render a map that shows Scotland as a nation state, you 
could use the same linestyle for admin_level=2 and admin_level=3. If you are 
of the opposite opinion you could choose to do the same with admin_level=3 
and admin_level=4.

-- 
m.v.g.,
Cartinus