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

[Tobias Knerr]

PAA schrieb:
> There are more than 1500 misspellings of the tag in the european
> database right now.

Which you can fix within a few minutes if you are sure that they aren't
intended.

> 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.

Improve editor autocompletion. Or write a plugin / alternative editor
version that changes all "highway" keys to "h" for you (and back at upload).

If that's really a problem for anyone else, everyone will be using your
super-efficient editing tool. Most likely you'll find out that many
people are using templates, autocompletion or simply copy existing tags
anyway and don't care about manual typing at all. Others probably prefer
human-readable tagging.

> I think i've demonstrated some merits in this proposal. Are they any
> good reasons not to do it besides potential confusion? 

"Potential confusion" can consume far more mapper and programmer time
than you are hoping to save. It's a good enough reason.

That the proposal would require changing every editor, rendering or
routing tool, documentation (including printed books) etc. isn't
negligible either. And permanently having "h OR highway" in every tool,
stylesheet etc. sucks.

Tobias Knerr