[OSM-talk] [tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - h==highway

[PAA]

>> Request for comments on creating the key:h and making it synonymous with
>> key:highway.
> That's just ridiculous.
> Don't start duplicating tags with the same meaning.

It's definitely not something to be done with all tags, but i don't
think you made a very good case why it's ridiculous for this one tag
that is both prone to misspelling and in greater use than all others.
There are more than 1500 misspellings of the tag in the european
database right now.

I use potlatch mainly, and it's simple enough to get a highway tag in
potlatch. Moreover, all the roads around here have been imported from
public databases. It doesn't affect me personally, but i think the
cumulative savings in time for all mappers over the rest of OSM's
lifetime could be substantial.

>> -reduce OSM data storage space (over 6M highways just from
>> http://tagwatch.stoecker.eu/Europe/En/tags.html; simple naive estimate
>> 6M*6 bytes=36MBytes uncompressed data reduction)
>> -reduce bandwidth for transfers to/from OSM
>
> planet files are already compressed, you won't gain much by replacing
> meaningful tags by codeletters.

That could be, but there any gain would still have to be a significant
by the time the planet is mapped. My rudimentary knowledge of LZW
suggests that 'h' is probably smaller than a dictionary token, but i
think i have been wrong before, once or twice...an hour.

> And once you start with tag names, you could go on with values and
> replace "primary" with "p", "secondary" with "s" and so on.

"Could", but i'm definitely not advocating that. Let's not throw the
baby out with the bathwater, as they say.

I think i've demonstrated some merits in this proposal. Are they any
good reasons not to do it besides potential confusion? I've waded
through enough confusion since i joined OSM a few days ago to think
this small, fathomable addition will be completely lost in the noise.

Cheers,
PAA