[OSM-talk] barrier=gate

[David Earl]

On 09/11/2008 12:32, Gerald A wrote:
> Renderers should be following the project. If the community decides one 
> tag over the other, or both, or even neither, the renders will catch up 
> eventually. 

That may be indeed what many people would say, but in the absence of any 
standardisation of tags and the vehement opinion of many that there 
explicitly *shouldn't* be any standardisation of tags, the renderers 
will continue to yield the power and the effective decision making. If 
it weren't that all our renderers map highway=motorway, I rather think 
we'd see highway=freeway, autobahn, autostrade, autoroute, ... in 
widespread use. Many would defend the right to do precisely that, and 
the only reason it doesn't happen currently is because the renderers 
don't do anything with them. Perhaps they should.

In any case "the community" hasn't decided - clearly highway=gate is the 
  still the preferred option as few poeple have seen any overwhelming 
advantage (such as gates disappearing from the renderer for example) to 
update their areas.

In practice, I'm sure it is an iterative process involving emerging 
consensus rather that anyone deciding one way or another. But the 
pragmatist and perfectionist camps are both quite strident in their 
view. Me, I'll just go with the flow, though I still think the words 
used for tags are pretty much irrelevant and that abstracting away from 
what is actually stored, e.g. for translation and cultural purposes 
would be good.

David.