[OSM-talk] Handling of towns with different or alternative names

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab at gmail.com
Tue Jan 27 22:58:25 GMT 2009


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Simon Ward <simon at bleah.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 04:36:08PM -0500, Matthias Julius wrote:
>> > This doesn't account for multiple names in the same language, though.  I
>> > can also imagine a place having several old names over time, while
>> > old_name=* really only allows for one.
>>
>> IMHO there really needs to be a well defined mechanism that allows a
>> tag to have multiple values.  To invent new keys like old_name_1 and
>> old_name_2 is certainly not optimal.
>>
>> The FAQ has the recommendation of separating multiple values with a
>> ';' and to enter a semicolon that is part of the data as ';;'.
>
> I think multiple keys with the same name should be allowed for a
> node/way/relation.  AFAIK it's only the editors that don't currently let
> you do this.

Yes, the API and data format supports it, but only for another 2
months or so until we switch to 0.6 where it won't be allowed.

And -- to do some drive-by bikeshedding -- I think that leaves us with
an unoptimal situation where editors either have to shove things into
the same key delimited by some token like ";" as is currently
recommended but AFAIK not supported by any renderer (or any tool?), or
to put what's logically the same data under different keys.

Although the DB argument of having keys be primary keys is certainly
understandable.




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