[OSM-talk] Mapping everything as areas

[Teemu Koskinen]

On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:40:53 +0200, Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>> Now, how are you going to indicate a direction of travel on an area?
>> I guess you could come up with some way to do it, but you'd basically
>> be defining a way.
>
> Good point. Anyone got ideas on this? Maybe it is indeed necessary to
> map each highway as a way (to indicate a logical path of travel) as
> well as an area (to reflect reality!).
>

A while ago I had an idea of "lane" type for osm, which is a directed  
area. I think a picture will explain it better:  
http://elanor.mine.nu/daeron/types.png (also includes an area type).

The lane type would consist of an ordered list of node pairs. Optionally  
the first and last pair could contain a "null" node, to allow mapping a  
lane that branches off from another. Also maybe other pairs could contain  
nulls, to avoid "unnecessary" nodes.

That way the area would have a direction, and it would be unnecessary to  
use ways to indicate the direction in addition to the area.

This of course would need pretty major reworking of the database, editors  
and renderers...

Regards Teemu Koskinen