[OSM-talk] ADDING THE ABILITY TO Mapping everything as areas

[Lester Caine]

I apologize for not reading every post in the original thread, but too many 
other things to do :(

The real point here is combining micro mapping with macro mapping transparently. 
There are many people who will argue that once you have a 'way', it can be 
tagged to define its 'area', but this misses the main point. At the top level we 
need a tree of 'objects'. Top one would be 'earth' ( allowing introduction of 
'moon' and 'mars' at some point in the future ;) ). And then everything fits 
below that, and must fit within an area. Once one gets down to finer detail such 
as school, hospital and the like, there is little option but to provide an area. 
Roads and other linear features are no different to these other area features, 
and may even fit inside some larger area. Service roads around a hospital for 
instance. So in the same way that we have single nodes for a hospital, along 
with a more detailed map of the same object, we should have an agreed way of 
handling the same detail for a road. Relations are something of a bodge to 
provide some of the missing information for a 'tree' view, but one should be 
able to select 'M6' and see the whole of the M6 ... as a single line on the map 
of England ... and on zoming in as a detailed area encompassing the verges and 
other 'nogo' areas including accurate details of each lane.

I am NOT saying that everybody needs to provide ALL this detailed information, 
but I am arguing that if the information is available - such as from satellite 
images then there needs to be a standard way of adding it, along with 
functionality amongst the tools to deal with the micro mapping details.

The bottom line is that while adding 'width' tags all the way along a road may 
be a practical half way house, other area features are not handled the same way 
so why should roads be any different. Macro details like number of lanes, and 
which one to use to take a safe path on and off a complex road interchange neeh 
to be handled as tags on the linear feature for routing purposes, but the 
ability to draw a road in the same detail as a golf course is a no brainer? 
Higher level views can then pull out nodes for hospital, golf course and road 
grid .... while higher zoom levels can how acurate fine detail?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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