[OSM-talk] Mapnik rendering labels for unrecognised tags

[Anthony]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 3:36 AM, Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>>
>> Sounds good.  I don't think storing these in OSM, with the
>> non-overlapping tags, is harmful.  While I'd love to see them in a
>> separate database or at least a separate layer, the fact of the matter
>> is that separate database and/or separate layer hasn't yet really been
>> implemented.
>
> This is the real problem!
> With more and more historic mapping material coming on line, and what seems
> like little support for the start_date/end_date tagging of physical objects
> that we have fairly accurate data on when they did make an appearance or
> when they were redeveloped, linking to other data sources where this
> information can be stored would at least allow it's integration?
>
> And the creation of 'temporary' layers where material is being worked on but
> has not yet been fully integrated would also seem to be a way forward even
> for general mapping?

Yeah.  I don't think it would be too hard to hack something up that
implements the basic API (enough to run JOSM against) and uses SQLite
as a backend.  This would be runnable by basically anyone, and good
enough for small dataset "layers" like this one.  Add in the ability
to export to .osm format (very simple) and you could basically run
Mapnik against it with no changes, with or without first merging with
other datasets and/or OSM proper.

But then, while I say it "wouldn't be too hard", it would probably
take a few weeks of full time coding, which unfortunately is something
I don't have for something that isn't going to help me pay the bills.
So as much as I hate to see these things in the main db, I'm accepting
of it.

Hopefully someone else will read this email, understand what I'm
talking about, and love the idea, though :).