[OSM-talk] Semantics layer for tags

[Peter Wendorff]

Am 10.01.2011 18:11, schrieb Martijn van Exel:
> Yes, that is exactly where a semantic layer would come in! For
> example, I would tag a feature in a semantics-enabled JOSM in my
> native language, Dutch, as "provinciale weg". A lookup in the ontology
> would expose an ambiguity: a provincial road could be highway=primary
> or highway=secondary, depending on the road number. Human
> disambiguation would be required, the attributes of the semantic
> relation between 'NL:provinciale weg' and 'highway=primary' and
> 'highway=secondary' could provide a clue to do this. In other cases,
> it could be automated based on the context. For example, if the road
> number was already entered by the user.
I think, it's a good idea to think about semantic layers for OSM, but 
not for the editing side of the API.

There are a few issues where this would work - like the one you 
mentioned, like the translation of highway=living_street to 
"Spielstraße" in German or highway=pedestrian to "Fußgängerzone".
But there are a lot of other issues much more complicated - and on top 
of that much less unified in meaning.

A lot of threads here, at the tagging mailing list and so on show 
problems with the interpretation of a tag - even staying with some 
not-absolutely-defined-kind-of English as base language.
If you look at talk-de there are some threads about translation 
possibilities for JOSM presets.

I don't remember much issues there where it was perfectly clear how to 
translate any tag. Even drinking_water was discussed with multicultural 
scope to the definition of what water you can drink (with/without 
boiling it before).

I fear, the definition of any "official" layer dealing with the 
translation will make these misinterpretations even harder to resolve as 
I'm not pushed to think about the meaning of a tag before using it.

Providing something like that as a translation table or multilanguage 
ontology is nevertheless a good idea perhaps; to give developers a 
starting point for translation of features on the one hand, and for 
understanding of the implicit ontology the tagging builds.

regards
Peter