[OSM-talk] Mapping everything as areas

[Roy Wallace]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Nice idea, BUT then you are limited to a series of rectangles. In some
>> situations, I think that will be too restrictive for not much gain.
>
> A series of quadrilaterals, perhaps. If width=10, then 50 metres
> later, width =15, I'd expect a quadrilateral gradually getting wider
> from 10 to 15.

If you apply widths to the nodes, I guess, yeah, it would be possible
for a renderer etc. to interpret these as requiring linear
interpolation. But approximation with trapezoids or whatever is a bit
fudgy....e.g. what if you *do* want to represent an instantaneous
change in width?

My point is that this general suggestion seems to be a way to *map
areas*, by *tagging ways*. Is this actually better than to *map areas*
by *tagging areas*? If so, how?