[OSM-talk] Mapping everything as areas

[Anthony]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer
<dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/11/25 Anthony <osm at inbox.org>
>>
>> >>
>> >> I didn't know that was up for debate.  I thought the consensus was
>> >> that they should not only share nodes, but they should share ways as
>> >> well.
>> >
>> > no, I don't think that's a good idea as the resulting multipolygons make
>> > the
>> > situation unnecessarily complicated.
>> >
>> Wow.  I hope you're in the minority on that one, because now that I
>> discovered multipolygon relations there's no way I'm going back to
>> mapping the exact same line three times (e.g. to represent a park
>> adjacent to a residential area separated by a fence).
>>
>
> OK, I put that right (as I'm using multipolygons myself quite a lot): it
> depends on the situation. If the fence (line between the 2 areas) is
> consisting of a lot of nodes it might be better to use a multipolygon, but
> if its just 2-3 nodes, I bet you will never be faster with a relation. You
> will still be creating the first multipolygon when I already finished all
> polygons ;-)

Whew, you scared me.  Personally, I mostly use Potlatch, and don't
find relations to be much effort at all (and much easier for later
editing), but I'm perfectly willing to cooperate with people who do it
the other way.  Eventually, one day, I guess we'll have to decide, but
not until all the editors make one way or the other a piece of cake,
and not until a script is in place to convert all the instances of the
losing method into the winning method.  By that time we'll have every
single area of the globe (except maybe the oceans) covered by an area,
right?  :)