[OSM-talk] Announcemen: Multilingual Country-List

[Peter Körner]

Marc Schütz schrieb:
>>> Still I think a case could be made for country names to be different:
>> most of them are so prominent that I would say they exist in most languages,
>> even if they are identical to the native names.
>>> For example, the German names for most European countries are different
>> from their native names. However, Portugal happens to have the same name
>> (well, spelling) in German and in Portugese. Would you therefore say, that
>> Portugal doesn't have a German name?
>> It has one, but that's not a translation - rust a repetition. And 
>> name:xx-tags are (in my opinion), basically translation-tags.
>>
>> Nevertheless I don't like different rules for similar things, so i don't 
>> want to have a different "rule" for countries as for cities. It's a rule 
>> in quotation marks, because no one forces you to remove those tags and 
>> if you want to add them for a language, i won't go and delete them.
> 
> Well, the common rule for both cities and countries would then be: "If it has a name in language xxx, then add a name:xxx tag (and don't care if it has the same value as "name"), else leave it."
> 
> Although this basically follows from the "on the ground rule", it would probably be very subjective to decide.
> 
> Anyway, I don't have a strong opinion on this anymore. As you and Martin have pointed out, it will probably make no difference in practice, as "name" will be taken as a fallback.
> 
> Regards, Marc
> 

In my eyes the rule should be: "If it has a name in language xxx *that 
differs from it's native name*, then add a name:xxx tag"

And that what i did it like for German. I don't feel myself in a 
position to publish this rule on the wiki nor on my tool, as long as 
there are no more voices for / against it.

Peter