[OSM-talk] Naming disputes in Ukraine

[Lester Caine]

"Petr Morávek [Xificurk]" wrote:
> Lester Caine wrote:
>> >colliar wrote:
>>> >>I also prefer the name that is on the sign, but we should think about
>>> >>always
>>> >>adding the name with its language tag, too, otherwise it is not clear
>>> >>which
>>> >>language is used and you have to get this information from some other
>>> >>source.
>> >
>> >I'm coming to a point where I might suggest that 'name' is ONLY
>> >populated with a language code or codes?
> This is actually pretty good idea, but...
>
> If we start replacing the content of the name only by language
> reference, we will most definitely break a lot of apps.
>
> Taking the best of this and previous ideas, I would propose this:
>
> *** Data producers ***
> 1) Deprecate bare tags name, official_name etc. (bare = without ':lang'
> suffix).
> 2) Embrace the usage of language specific tags like 'name:en',
> 'name:de', ...
> 3) Introduce new tag 'lang', which should contain a pointer to the
> locally used language. (For multilingual areas, we could use something
> like lang="de / it".)
>
> *** Data consumers ***
> How to get name, official_name, etc. in default local format?
> - Is there lang tag?
>    YES: Take its value and replace lang codes by the values of language
>         specific tags.
>    NO:  Fallback to the tag value withou language suffix.
>
> Examples:
> {name="Praha", name:en="Prague"}
> =>name="Praha"
>
> {name:de="Bozen", name:it="Bolzano", lang="it - de"}
> =>name="Bolzano - Bozen"
>
> ---
> There are few things I really like about this solution:
> 1) You can apply the same logic to all language specific tags, not only
> 'name'.
> 2) There is no BC break.
> 3) No data duplication in the main database.
> 4) You are free to specify locally used multilingual format, so the
> result of the algorithm above would satisfy "on the ground" rule.
> 5) I could imagine this algorithm implemented in osm2pgsql, it could
> automatically expand this to the appropriate general tags on import
> time, thus all its users would not have to change a thing in their code.
>
>
> So, what do you think?

Actually 'lang' could be populated from a higher level area setting initially?

This sidesteps a number of problems in implementation, my only comment would be 
as I indicated. lang="it - de" or "de / it" needs to be a single identifiable 
character. Formatting should be language specific when building a 'text=" 
string, and that could be populated in a language specific way for the users 
preference anyway?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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