[OSM-talk] Validator tags

[DavidD]

2008/11/22 Matthias Julius <lists at julius-net.net>:

> Whatever the syntax is you won't know why someone chose not to include
> a name tag.  The here discussed proposal is only about telling the
> validator not to complain about the missing tag.  It is up to the
> mapper to be reasonable and not just include ignore tags because all
> those maplint warnings are too annoying.

I don't really see why this is needed. Wouldn't it be a lot better to
have a tag for when a street has no visible name sign? Then I and
other mappers know what is going on and there is no risk of someone
with local knowledge thing the street is already named.

I remember when osmarender used to render all street names in the same
font size on all streets even if the streets where too short for the
name to fit. As a result the osmarender:renderName=no tag was often
added to small streets to make the render look nicer. Then osmarender
stopped adding names to short streets and could use a smaller font
size on smaller streets. As a result many streets that could have had
a name rendered did not and all the osmarender:renderName tags needed
to be deleted or where pointless. Someone then had to go around and
delete all the useless tags.

I suspect the same mistake is being made here. The validators will get
smarter and the tags will end up pointless or harmful. Tagging for
validators should IMO be viewed the same as tagging for renderers.

-- 
DavidD