[OSM-talk] [Fwd: Re: Proliferation of path vs. footway]

Mike Harris mikh43 at googlemail.com
Fri Aug 14 10:12:59 BST 2009


'gewidmet' does best translate as 'dedicated' - but in English law that is something different to 'designated' (at least as 'designated' is defined on the wiki). In practice, 'dedicated' can mean the process by which something becomes 'designated' (in this context) OR it can mean a path that a landowner allows to be used by the public (i.e. a 'permissive path) because he has voluntarily 'dedicated' it in that way - as well as a public right of way. I would tend to steer clear of 'dedicated' in English because it is potentially ambiguous. I would tend to translate 'designated' as 'bestimmt' or 'bezeichnet' but am unsure which is better! (it doesn't imply anything about signage per se - although there are certain legal obligations on the authority to erect signs at certain types of points).

.. And this is just the ambiguity arising between a single language pair!

Mike Harris

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Koppenhoefer [mailto:dieterdreist at gmail.com] 
Sent: 14 August 2009 02:51
To: Roy Wallace
Cc: osm
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] [Fwd: Re: Proliferation of path vs. footway]

2009/8/14 Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 8:26 AM, Martin 
> Koppenhoefer<dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2009/8/14 Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com>:
>>
>> but this is not real "map"-information but it is legal information 
>> you could also get from different sources. If a way is legally a 
>> cycleway, all the laws and implications in that county apply automatically.
>
> highway=cycleway (and footway) has inconsistent implications. This is 
> the problem, and this occurs even within areas with the same law. I 
> think this makes cycleway an inherently bad tag (as currently used).

in Italy (and probably in Germany more or less as well) we use highway=cycleway if there is a cycleway-sign (blue with white bike).
Other ways are not cycleways, but could get bicycle=yes.

> You suggest we use the wiki to supplement the database - that's fine,

Yes. This is somehow already done by "defining" possible meanings of the tags. I wrote that legal implications within a certain country could be documented in the wiki, so it's not necessary to tag them all explicitly (like motorcar=no, foot=no on cycleways). This is actually already done, e.g. in the German wiki pages. It's theoretically no problem to tell in which country a way is,  just by the map data, as long as we have precise borders (might require some preprocessing though).

> BUT within the database highway=cycleway must mean the same thing as 
> highway=cycleway. That's called consistency. Putting extra stuff in 
> the wiki *cannot* give the database consistency.

the problem is, that real world is not consistent across borders. If you say: all ways that are marked as cycleways (sign or painted on the
street) are to tag as cycleways, this will mean different implicit access-tags in different countries. I can't see a real problem here though. It would be nice to have for the main features a per-country-list the transcripts local legislation in OSM (define default-presets). Cases not according to those presets would be tagged explicitly.

> You make the point that we should be entering "real map-information"
> in the database. I agree, and interpret this as meaning the database 
> should represent the situation "on the ground" (and not necessarily 
> aim to capture also the situation "in the law books" - unless this can 
> be done in a separate namespace, e.g. law:*=*, as others have 
> suggested).

well, I'm not a pure "on the ground"-guy, I think what ever information you figure out and could potentially be useful I encourage to put into the database. But tagging the default law-situation for every single way seems exaggerated to me - hence we use classification and xy=designated to describe with one or two tags a series of implications for ways.

Maybe there is a slight language problem though: many of the tags are proposed by non-native speakers. I rember the discussion about path on the German ML and someone said "gewidmet" (I think in Engl.
"dedicated", it is in this context the process of legally assigning a road class to a way) translates to "designated" and maybe therefore it's like this now. If you look in a common Engl-German dictionary you'll find several not congruent translations:
http://dict.leo.org/?lp=ende&from=fx3&search=designated

cheers,
Martin







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