[OSM-talk] Languages

Stephan Plepelits skunk at xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at
Thu May 7 08:59:43 BST 2009


On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 04:36:58PM +0300, Tal wrote:
> Regarding the "official language", or more precisely, which of the available
> languages to use, I've always felt that this is a rendering issue, sort of. I
> mean, that this is a higher level knowledge that should be an input to the
> rendering software, in addition to the osm db, much like the rule file. This
> new knowledge, which might reside in the rule file, should not be a part of the
> osm db.
I'm totally with you, it should be a thing for the renderer. But ... if you
don't know in which language the name-tag is in, it's hard to decide which
language to take.

An example. I want a German map, but when there are no German names I'd
prefer English ones.

No you encounter a street:
name=Bergstrasse
name:en=Mountain Road

Which text do you print on the map? I think we need a way to tell the
renderer which language(s) are used for the name, ref, desc, ...-tags.
And actually I don't see a political problem, because it just adds some
additional information about something which is already there.

And in cases where you have several languages in the name-tag you should
use the same order for the language-tag. (That doesn't have to imply any
"importance" or what-so-ever).

I just create a feature proposal, maybe things will get clearer with it:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Language_of_this_element

greetings,
        Stephan
-- 
Seid unbequem, seid Sand, nicht Öl im Getriebe der Welt! - Günther Eich
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| Stephan Plepelits,                                                  |
| Technische Universität Wien   -    Studium Informatik & Raumplanung |
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| skunk at xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at       -       My Blog: http://plepe.at |
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