[OSM-talk] Proliferation of path vs. footway

[Andy Allan]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Tom Chance<tom at acrewoods.net> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I'm 100% unclear about the distinction between highway=path and
> highway=footway.
>
> Paths and footways, which seem to be used for the same sorts of ways by
> different mappers, both show up differently on the main map.

That's because these maps are turning into colourful symbolisations of
the tags, rather than being actual maps. A large constituency of
people think that every tag should be rendered differently, whereas in
fact the "cartographers" should be deciding how to communicate
real-world features to the users of the maps. Especially in the case
of paths, since we have multiple ways of tagging exactly the same
thing, or where the differences are so small (c.f. my previous
comments regarding minor/tertiary/unclassified) that they are the same
thing to most people.

> The Mapnik and
> Tiles at Home stylesheets have quite enough different way styles already,

Too true. My attempts to reconcile highway=path into the rendering
scheme for OCM continues.

Cheers,
Andy