[OSM-talk] Naming dispute over Jerusalem - OSM failure

[john whelan]

We have a similar problem in Ottawa with English and French.  Politically
French is given equal weight but reality is most maps have English street
names etc.

We also had one or two entries that combined English and French which meant
they were difficult to read and extremely difficult to search.  To find
Slater street one would have to enter name="rue Slater Street" not something
a casual user would immediately think of and few Anglophones know what the
correct translation for Crescent is, it happens to be croissant so Cara
Crescent becomes "croissant Cara Crescent"  also many Anglophones would
enter the address as Croissant Cara rather than croissant Cara which doesn't
help matters.

About 97% of entries were English only.  Today roughly 90+% of street names
have a name:fr value

What we have today uses name and name:fr.  Name is the English value the
French is in name:fr.  For rendering one solution is Maperitive, when used
with a local database it can display different languages according to the
rules used.  One nice feature is you can search the database for
"name:fr="rue Slater""

I have an off line version of Ottawa here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WkJzx5NffRv0TIQgCFFGTQzyqbQ9XDphSLqcjuM8wGM/edit?hl=en_US

I suggest you get a copy and see if you can't come up with a map that
displays in Hebrew, English and Arabic and is searchable.  The searchable
might be useful in that in order to use the functionality you need the
different languages in different fields.

It might also be an idea to see if someone can come up with a server that
renders in Arabic.

I'd also point at different renders, wheelmap.org is one,
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strategic_working_group/Featured_routing_servicescontains
some others.

Stress the functionality and the fact that the basic mapping idea should be
to map but not for a specific render.

Best of luck.

Cheerio John


On 4 October 2011 20:24, Nathan Edgars II <neroute2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/4/2011 7:00 PM, dimka israeli wrote:
>
>> Anxious to have it back, we proposed during the meeting to have two
>> separate nodes, tagged respectively in Hebrew and Arabic. However, the
>> other side would agree on nothing less than equal rendering (they are
>> explicitly interested in rendering only) of the two names, which implied
>> that the Arabic node would be tagged as capital (analogous to Hebrew
>> Jerusalem).
>>
>
> Let's not kid ourselves; this is about rendering. When name:lang tags
> exist, the main purpose of the name tag is for rendering and other
> applications that make use of the name tag. A good application will allow
> the user to choose language and use that tag, with the name tag as a
> fallback.
>
> How are multilingual signs treated in general? I notice that many cities in
> China, Korea, and Japan have the English name in parentheses. Unless things
> have changed since http://www.evenatthedoors.com/**
> album/images/92%20Jerusalem%**20City%20Limits%20Sign.html<http://www.evenatthedoors.com/album/images/92%20Jerusalem%20City%20Limits%20Sign.html>was taken, the "on the ground" status is that the name is trilingual.
>
>
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