[OSM-talk] Suggestion: fallback tag

[Shalabh]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 11:55 PM, Shalabh <shalabh.w at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 1. And what if even the 'fallback tag' is not rendered by the renderer?
>>
>
> That's the current situation. So, the worst case scenario, with this tag,
> is...what we have now. Every other case is an improvement.
>

>
>> 2. Some things may have just no fallback e.g. Mountain passes are not
>> rendered by most renderers. What would be the fallback tag in such a case.
>>
>
> Not sure which tag you're referring to. If the tag is just a bit of
> decoration, maybe you don't need a fallback. But in lots of other cases, it
> would be good to be able to fall back to at least a landuse=industrial, or
> building=yes or something.
>

Referring to 'Mountain pass' which is not a decoration by any means.

>
>
>>
>> In my opinion, this will only confuse the mappers more when they tag a
>> POI.
>
>
> Nah. Only the smart mappers would even think of using it.
>

And the 'not so smart ones' may sometimes end up putting in unwanted values
or choosing the wrong option from a drop down. And then some smart ones will
have to correct all that.

>
>
>> A few days down the line, we would have many more questions on what should
>> be the fallback of what and why?
>>
>
> Nah. It doesn't matter enough. I would see it mostly as a personal thing
> for the mapper, to know that at least *something* will render.
>
> I would think a better idea is to have atleast one renderer and the main
>> OSM map to render a superset of all tags.
>>
>>
> There are hundreds of thousands of distinct key=value pairs. And even if
> that was one renderer could do it...how does that help? Say I want Mapnik to
> look nice, but you propose that I use Osmarender instead because it supports
> every single tag.... This isn't a solution at all.
>
> Steve
>
Better than having renderers rendering the same area with different colours
and notations.

Anyway, for this approach to even start making sense, there has to be TAG
FAMILY TREE covering each known tag such that each has fallback options
going up to a certain level. And then each renderer should follow the TAG
TREE. Not sure how feasible would this be.

Regards,
Shalabh
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20091217/ea5bcfdd/attachment.html>