[OSM-talk] Mapping everything as areas

[Roy Wallace]

On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Right now, what's stopping them?
>>
>> Documentation. Or, in other words, at least some suggestions as to how
>> to do it. For example, you'll notice that Map Features states that
>> highway's are ways, not areas.
>>
> Weird.  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:area%3Dyes says that
> highways can be areas.

Interesting, thanks for that link - it appears to be easy to overlook
- for me, anyway.

Note, though, that the Key:area page states "area=yes, in the context
of roads, indicates that the area has no street lines within it". I
expect we will want this restriction lifted at some point, to be able
to indicate the area occupied by long roads, or roads with a
direction. I guess the questions remain:

1) how to indicate an area's direction

2) whether it is necessary/most convenient (in some situations) to
represent a particular highway as both a way AND an area

3) if so, how to relate a physical area to the corresponding logical
way, if that's even necessary/recommended

Apologies if this has been discussed before - if it has, please point
me to the relevant discussion page :)