[OSM-talk] New tool in Potlatch 2 for areas that share a way

[M∡rtin Koppenhoefer]

2011/2/1 Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com>:
> I think a few of our tags aren't sufficiently well defined to be clear
> about which is correct. For example, say a steel manufacturer owns a
> large piece of land, at one end of which is a steel smelter. The rest
> is grass. Is the whole land landuse=industrial?


probably no. Landuse is describing the actual usage of the land. If
there is only grass, it cannot be considered industrial, regardless of
who owns the land.


> Partly this gets back to the debate about whether a map is an abstract
> representation, or whether it's essentially a 2D bitmap of the real
> world.


We can't do different then use abstraction. What you are thinking
about is resolution IMHO. Every generalisation should be aware of the
scale the map will be printed. As we are trying to create an universal
database (i.e. there is no such thing as a fixed scale in OSM,
although there is some scale limits like the precision in which we
store the coordinates), the finer the data is structured, the more
possible maps could be made out of it.

cheers,
Martin