[OSM-talk] Trace type

[Tomas Straupis]

Hello

  During a meeting of Lithuanian mappers we raised an idea, that it
would be useful to have type of track recorded along access/security
details. That is currently you only specify how your traces can be
accessed (public, private, intermediary). It would be nice to be able
specify how were those tracks recorded and for what purpose. Say:
  * Motorcar
  * Bicycle
  * Foot (along road/street)
  * Foot (along some feature (f.e. forest/woodland/lake/river bank/edge))
  * Unclassified track (for tracks recorded with GPS switched on while
doing a lot of different activities: driving, walking, sitting in one
place etc. - probably the default setting or the one used for all
previous traces).

  This could later be used in editors to use different colours for
different types of traces. This way we would rather approximate street
track along motorcar traces (if available) rather than "foot-traces"
done walking alongside the street.

  For example if I want to mark a better bank of a lake (or say edge
of a forest), I could walk around a lake and mark that trace as "Foot
(alongside natural object)" so that it is displayed as say blue/green
in JOSM. This way other mappers would not confuse it with actual
footpath or even worse - track/road.

  What do you think?

P.S. Currently there is a possibility to add "tags", but those are not
"predefined", there is no clear explanation how to use them etc. And
anyway, currently they are used (as far as I know) to specify a
"place" traces rather than "how" or "for what purpose" was a trace
done.
P.S.S. I do understand that the best source for mapping such natural
features would be aerial photos, but until or where those are not
available or are available in bad detail...

-- 
Tomas Straupis