[OSM-talk] Tagging Multiple Services to a Company/Building

[Ian Mc Shane]

Hello Roy,

>> private banking services
> private_banking_services=yes

>> foreign exchange
> foreign_exchange=yes

>> tanning
> tanning=yes

>> massage?
> massage=yes

Yes that would do the job... I asked a friend of mine what his thoughts were 
and following are the results of our debate.

Note that I am straying from the original question to a more high level view 
of the situation and breaking it up into two sections:
1)  Do you want all that detail?
2)  Assuming yes, how to denote the detail


1)  Do you want all that detail?

The first thing brought up was is that level of detail applicable to OSM?

It was a bit of a yes and no answer, in that OSM, IMHO, has a function 
beyond mapping, and that is to describe the map.  Describing a business and 
their products may be a little too much vs. just noting that they exist and 
they are in that building.

The extra detail is probably more applicable to a higher level system which 
is geared towards the detail requested.

For example a town/suburb website using OSM data for geo-location of 
businesses in the area would have their own database of what each business 
provides in terms of services and products...

This can be noted in an example such as a Delicatessen... they range from 
small subset of specific foods to a whole range of different products but we 
can't detail what they sell categorically as product categories can change 
rapidly.

So how much detail, is too much detail is the crux of it...  and I suppose 
the crux of my original question.


2)  Assuming yes, how to denote the detail:

Let us assume we want the detail, how would we add the tags?  While I do 
like what you suggested, an issue comes about when trying to work with the 
OSM data in your own backyard and/or rendering.

The issue is with the grouping of the associated meta-data about the 
POI/building [entity].

For instance, tanning=yes, does that mean a spa provides tanning services or 
is it related to a factory that tans leather?
The only way to find out is to hope that the name or the other tags on 
entity provide us with some more detail.

    shop=beauty
    tanning=yes

    amenity=factory
    tanning=yes

Unfortunately an individual can not rely on the name to help out with 
understanding what the entity is when the name is in a language you have no 
concept of.  And for me that is every other language besides Afrikaans and 
English...  So for me to make use of data created by users in a foreign 
country I will likely have issues deriving what exactly the entity is when 
doing post-processing of OSM data.

With all that said, going the route of:
shop=beauty
beauty=tanning
beauty=massage
etc.

will help in identifying what type of "tanning" I am getting myself into... 
This may even help with the renderers, but considering I have no real 
knowledge of what is potting on the renderer side I won't comment any more 
on that.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a short reply... so I will stop now.  Please 
let me know on your thoughts.


Ian