[OSM-talk] Thoughts about Map Features and Maplint

[David Earl]

On 26/11/2008 23:09, Ed Loach wrote:
>> ... from which Map Features could be auto-generated because we
>> don't
>> want to maintain the information in two places.
> 
> I agree entirely. Maintaining the information in two places would be
> OTT (over the top, in case this is a UK specific phrase: too much,
> unnecessary, etc). 
> 
> But then you'd have complaints on the wiki that those with svn
> accounts aren't adding all the new features. 

I'm going to muddy waters between two threads that are going on here.

The parallel topic "Rendering barangays for the Philippines" is talking 
about localisation of tags and their enumerated values. Even though 
there's no agreement about where this would be done, there does seem to 
be some agreement from some of the contributors that there would need to 
be a table storing tag translations somewhere. (Not to say you can't 
have tags that aren't in the table).

If such a table existed, it could be the source for the documentation - 
in multiple languages - as well as the localisations. And it could be a 
formal part of the API to update it, so you could in principle introduce 
new tags (with descriptions), as well as translations for existing tags, 
through the API via an editor (either one built for the purpose, or 
through JOSM/Potlatch/whatever, or both). So everybody's happy - 
everyone can still change the documentation (and in doing so they're 
also changing the API), and we have a way of getting a structured 
version of the tags information and a controlled way of managing it.

Incidentally, this could also give us a halfway house between the 
pragmatists and the perfectionists. It could enforce what tags and 
values are allowed, which avoids the stupid spelling mistakes, while not 
restricting what tags are allowed because anyone can explicitly add to 
the set of permitted tags using whatever tools we might develop for 
this. Everyone can still do what they want (in their own language), but 
are protected against their own mistakes. And the documentation matches 
reality.

David