[OSM-talk] Patch to render names from routes and custom highway shields on a per country basis

[Richard Weait]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 9:38 PM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/9/21 Richard Weait <richard at weait.com>:
[ ... ]
>> So I suggest we pattern on network=us_i for Interstates, us_us for US
>> Routes, us_ny_ny for New York State Routes, us_ny_ny_co for New York
>> county roads, etc.  These tags should sort nicely alphabetically for
>> bug-squashing and allow collision avoidance with imperfect knowledge
>> of other international network naming systems.
>
> What you are doing specifically will end up causing inconsistent data
> because you don't see us_ny_ny_co on signs and people won't tag it.

Dear John,

You underestimate the intelligence of OSM contributors and their
motivation to make the map better.  Particularly you underestimate
their wish for better highway shields.  You think increasingly
specific network tags are too complicated for OSM contributors?  Are
you familiar with the great success of the Karlsruhe addressing
Schema?[1] ;-)

They will tag it.  Absolutely they will tag it.  When Mapnik support
for local shields is adopted on osm.org and announced on talk-US it
will take less than 7 days for the US Interstate system to have shiny
new shields from coast to coast.  I'll send you a bottle of Canadian
Maple Syrup if I am wrong.

> In the case of US interstate it should just be network=I, state
> highways network=S

"S" and "I" are so lacking context as to approach line-noise.
"us_ny_ny_co" even hints at the right answer, without reading the
docs.

> That is enough information combined with a database or shape file with
> all the meta information about what shield exists in which location,

Those are mandatory with your incomplete tags.  They are optional with
explicit, human-readable tags.

> and defaulting to UK style signs if a localised style hasn't been
> defined otherwise.

I agree that failover to the UK style shield is better than nothing.

Best regards,
Richard

[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/House_numbers/Karlsruhe_Schema