[OSM-talk] Yet another street number scheme

[Matias D'Ambrosio]

On Thursday 16 October 2008 14:28:33 Andy Allan wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 6:28 AM, Karl Newman <siliconfiend at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just to reiterate my perspective, the Karlsruhe schema is fine for what
> > it is, but it's not sufficient for all uses.
>
> Perhaps not natively, but I don't see why it can't be converted into
> interpolated-on-street during processing? I don't know of any use of
> OSM data that doesn't require *some* level of processing.
>
 It can be a resource intensive process, and that would make many embedded 
devices unable to interact with OSM directly.

> On the other hand, putting the information directly on the street
> limits the ability to produce useful things like maps with numbers on
> the building outlines. So I'd say we should go for "numbers on houses"
> (e.g. Karlsruhe scheme), and downgrade using post-processing to
> "numbers on streets" whenever there's such desire / technological
> limitations.
>
 Mapping is a gradual process. The Karlsruhe schema requires a lot of work and 
is outright impractical in roads that don't have houses yet they do have 
numbers at each corner, used for interpolation, humans are pretty good at it.
 The Karlsruhe schema and an interpolation one can coexist without issues.
 They are not mutually exclusive.
 Really, I don't see why this has repeated so many times. :-)
 I currently have uses for the interpolated method, the most obvious one being 
printed maps. Here traditional maps have street numbers written every km or 
so (depending on what looks good).
 The interpolation method is a lot better to map areas quickly, too. I plan to 
do a short trip on Sunday to see a performance, in that short trip I'll be 
able to write down all the street names in that town, whether they are one 
way and the numbers in a good quantity of the intersections. That will take 
me what, an hour, maybe? I can do that just driving around with a buddy 
taking notes. If we choose to use *only* the Karlsruhe schema then I would 
need to actually get off the car (house numbers use much smaller signs not 
always visible from the car) and walk for several hours in different days. 
Not to mention I would not walk in certain neighbourhoods. It's not 
practical. Many mappers don't have a GPS and a GPS' precision is often not 
good enough to tell a lot from the next one; figuring out which building a 
number belongs to from a satellite/aerial photograph is not easy. The 
Karlsruhe schema is a luxury for areas that are already very well mapped.