[OSM-talk] Size & number of Keys (was osm2pgsql hstore)

[mick]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:09:33 +0000
Graham Jones <grahamjones139 at gmail.com> wrote:

 
> Yes - I think it is just a style difference - I am quite happy to interpret
> it from context for the sake of having a smaller number of unique keys to
> think about.
> 
Fewer Unique keys keys are a good thing, especially if they are as terse as is reasonable. I use MapInfo v7.8[1] for most of my editing and constantly run into problems with the number of keys and the total length of the key/tag space due to limitations.

When I used osm2pgsql to load the database then use QGIS[2] to export to a MapInfo table I end up with a table that exceeds MapInfo's number of columns limit, and because of the way QGIS's OSM plugin works, about half the objects have a combined tag space that exceeds the MapInfo column size limit of 254 characters. 

In about 1/3 of those objects name of object and type of object (e.g. road, river, ...) get truncated.

I can workaround these issues but it takes a lot of time so I ask all mappers to please think about weather that tag you are adding is really necessary.

I am not saying don't use them, just be sparing.

I would also appreciate any suggestions that might help me get around these issues in a simpler way than manually editing the .osm file

[1] I have been using MapInfo since the mid 1990's and v7.8 is the last release I can get working in Linux under Wine.

[2] QGIS works quite well until you get more than 1 or 2,000 objects, more than that slows it down to a crawl.

I am running Ubuntu 11.04 on a core i5 2500 with 16 gb ram.

mick