[OSM-talk] Maritme borders

[Jochen Topf]

On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 06:30:31PM +0000, Thomas Wood wrote:
> > Why are they different? I don't see that.
> >
> > Adding new tags (here boundary=maritime) always has a cost. Every
> > software that wants to do something with the data has to know about it.
> 
> Some software will want to differentiate, most will not require the
> maritime borders by default. Most will only care about the land
> boundaries and coastline, as most other world maps use.

Then they can use land_area=administrative as documented in my posting.

We seem to mostly agree. You say that on land boundaries are
boundary=administrative and on sea they are boundary=maritime. People
can use both together if needed or only the land one together with
coastline. I basically say the same thing but having a relation
land_area=administrative for the land area part and a relation with
boundary=administrative for land and maritime borders.

The version where boundary=administrative is used on the water is, at
least in Europe, already beeing used in many places.

If you object to the relations, we need them for a sane way of finding
out what is bordering on what.

> If they have a need for maritime boundaries, then do a select on
> boundary=maritime, or even just boundary=*

There is no much need for maritime boundaries only, most people have a
need for land+maritime boundaries or land boundaries+coastline. Both can
easily be done with the system described my me. Its harder to check for
two things if you can check for one.

And checking for boundary=* doesn't work as you might get things like
boundary=nature_park or whether in there.

> boundary=maritime opens up the possibility for a logical ordering of
> boundary_type=eez etc. Or, we could extend admin_level to it, but

EEZ ist something different. I am only talking about administrative
borders. Thats what decides which ones police is going to arrest you if
you hit somebody over the head in there. Thats the same on land as it is
on the sea.

> admin_level as it is is a little untidy.

What is untidy about it?

Jochen
-- 
Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.remote.org/jochen/  +49-721-388298