[OSM-talk] Lake Cowichan Now loaded (more of sample 092c area)

[andrzej zaborowski]

2009/6/19 Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Alan Millar<am12 at bolis.com> wrote:
>> >>> It should be sufficient to keep the canvec:UUID, source and
>> >>> attribution
>> >>> tags, and maybe a few of the other canvec:* (CMAS?). I don't see why
>> >>> we
>> >>> would need most of the others. If someone is really interested in
>> >>> them,
>> >>> they
>> >>> can look them up in Canvec using the UUID.
>> >
>> > Right.  And anyone interested in the AND details can look them up
>> > somewhere else.  And anyone interested in the TIGER details can look
>> > them
>> > up somewhere else.  And anyone interested in the USGS Geonames details
>> > can
>> > look them up somewhere else.  And so on, and so on, and so on for each
>> > import, of which the number and scope continue to grow.
>>
>> +1
>>
>> Please import all the data. OSM should seek to become the canonical
>> source for all free geodata, having free data split across multiple
>> databases is the problem we're trying to solve, not introduce.
>>
>> Anyone using Canvec today should should be able to use OSM as a
>> drop-in replacement.
>
> While I agree with what you're saying, I don't agree with the way it's being
> done: we should not store the definition of the Canvec data types on every
> single data point. if we want OSM to be a drop-in replacement for the data
> imports that we add (barring licensing, of course), then we need to put
> these data definitions somewhere else (the wiki, for example). Every other
> data import I've been involved with has done this, so I don't understand why
> we need to start for Canvec.

Looking at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/CanVec_OSM_Map_Features
this definition isn't even in the CanVec data, so there's no talk
about "removing" anything.  The definition tags are looked up in a
table and added by the canvec2osm script.

To take the example from that wiki page, the data merely contains a
tag like CODE=2420031 and the script converts it into *four* different
tags:

canvec:entity=Trail - ( Sentier )
canvec:entity_description=A narrow path or route suitable for walking;
hiking; or bicycling.
canvec:value=Portage - ( Portage )
canvec:value_description=A trail used by canoeists to bypass an
unnavigable portion of a watercourse or to go from one watercourse to
another.

So that's not a carbon copy or a drop-in replacement for the Canvec
database.  A drop-in replacement would be simply a canvec:code=2420031
instead of all the four tags. (plus highway=path or something)

Giving the definition is a task for the browser, not the converter script.

Cheers