[OSM-talk] name tags on place=country and how they're rendered on lowzoom

[D Tucny]

2009/1/19 Robert (Jamie) Munro <rjmunro at arjam.net>

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> ビカス ヤダワ (vikas yadav) wrote:
> > where is a local language being set for a country or a region?
>
> By the country or regions government, usually.
>
> I think there is a misunderstanding going on here. If I speak English, I
> want and English map of the world. If I speak French, I want a French
> map of the world. In neither case do I want a map that has England in
> English and France in French. IMHO, the correct procedure for drawing a
> map is to:
>
> 1. Decide what language your map is in.
> 2. Look for name:[language]= tags and draw them
> 3. Look for name= tags where the one for your language doesn't exist.
>
> The problem is that the default maps generated by the project (mapnik
> and osmarender) both get this wrong. They omit step one, and try to
> pretend that the map can be not in any particular language.
>

It's obviously a preference thing then...  I'd prefer a map that had the
real names of features rather than whatever, potentially dodgy, translation
any other language had... I admit that it might be useful, especially with
non-latin character based languages to view alternative, potentially latin
variant names as an option, but, that shouldn't, I believe, be the
default...

Yes, making the maps available in different languages would be good, and the
idea of separating captions out into their own layers might be the best
approach to that, but, if we have any sort of default I believe it should
reflect the real feature names in their native language... This is what I
would expect...

I think your correct procedure for drawing a map could only be applicable if
you had a limited audience... OSM has an unlimited audience... The default
view of the map can't/shouldn't be targetted at a specific language in my
opinion...

d
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