[OSM-talk] is_in and similar tags

[Andy Allan]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 4:09 PM, David Earl<david at frankieandshadow.com> wrote:

> The reason I gave was for name searching, not routing. It allows the
> result of a search to be given a descriptive context that isn't
> currently possible any other way.

It allows the result of a search to be given a descriptive context
that isn't currently possible in any other way *that you want to
code*.

I know you're a strong proponent of the is_in tag, because it makes
your life 100 times easier when building the namefinder. That doesn't
make it a good idea.

What you should really be doing is ask someone to provide, every week,
a planet file which has all the is_in tags automatically generated
from the polygons, on as many nodes as you find useful. That way the
database isn't full of duplicated data, it's easy to edit (c.f. move
one boundary vs updating 100,000 is_in tags), mappers don't need to
bother with them, bots don't need to fix them, and you don't need to
write any code. Maybe some smart cookie could even write an osmosis
plugin that does the calculations.

Let's stop the is_in debate - yes, they are useful to data consumers,
no, they shouldn't be in OSM itself, and no, nobody has yet stepped up
to sort it out.

Cheers,
Andy