[OSM-talk] Semantics layer for tags

[Ed Avis]

Martijn van Exel <m <at> rtijn.org> writes:

>The user would be able to tag a feature with "chemist",
>"pharmacy", "farmacia or "apotheek" and that would result in the same
>coding in the OSM database (currently: shop=chemist).

Rather than typing in the name and hoping that it matches in the translation
layer, it would be better for the user to select it from a list.  It then
becomes an ordinary localization problem.  If the OSM editor program has a
set of choices with user-visible text for each, then existing translation
services such as Launchpad Translations can be used to localize them to
different languages.

>When consuming
>OSM data, the process could be reversed; based on the locale, a
>feature tagged "shop=chemist" could (would) be output as being one of
>these culturally determined Things. Note that a "chemist", a
>"pharmacy", a "farmacia" and an "apotheek" are names for something
>that is similar across cultures and languages, but not literally the
>same.

I don't fully understand what you mean.  If it all gets tagged the same way
on the map then a client program cannot distinguish between the German
apothecary and the Spanish pharmacy.  It would just be a language lookup
and not a culturally determined difference.

A residential street is not literally the same across cultures either, but
the different kinds have enough in common that they can all be tagged the same
way.  So I expect most amenities would be like that too.

>The idea is to *avoid* having different classifications on the
>database level, even though one concept could be represented by two
>different names in one language (consider freeway / highway).
>Any ambiguity arising from that would have to be handled by additional
>attributes.

This sounds very sensible and I think it is mostly the situation we have now.
What you are proposing is a more friendly interface to the OSM tags for non-
English speakers, rather than a change to the way tagging is done.  Is that so?

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>