[OSM-talk] New "Highways" view in OSM Inspector

[John Smith]

2010/1/9 Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>:
> Hi,
>
> Anthony wrote:
>> I'd imagine for some applications we'd want the former (a straight
>> road/rail), and for some we'd want the latter (the border of Wyoming).
>> Which should be the official definition according to the specs?
>
> Because very few people in OSM have any formal training in geography or
> cartography, it is very likely that most mappers - having the standard
> slippy map in mind - will assume that a straight line on Earth is a

...

> I think 1km is fine, 5km is acceptable, 10km is stretching the envelope
> and anything above that is asking for trouble. OSMI highlights distances

You are confusing things, the OSM data is stored in lat/lon which has
no projection, it's only when it's projected (converted) to be made
into a tile that it becomes a set of points.

So a straight line in the database as on the planet will still be a
straight line, if the rendering software needs more points it needs to
deal with it.