[OSM-talk] Area tags in Overpass API

[Paul Norman]

> From: Roland Olbricht [mailto:roland.olbricht at gmx.de]
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Area tags in Overpass API
> 
> The reason to choose objects with name was that all use cases so far
> have been variations of the question "Where am I?". And without a name
> or other distinctive tag value, the area has been considered to be of
> little use.
> 
> The deeper reason is that I would like in general to let Overpass API be
> tag agnostic. The areas are one of the few places where I haven't found
> a way to get areas without tag evaluation.

The canonical list of areas is all "polygon" entries in
http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applications/utils/export/osm2pgsql/default.sty
le

Anything with those tags will be considered an area by the osm2pgsql style
used for rendering tile.osm.org, which is the largest consumer.

> And there is even a future driven reason to encourage feedback: In the
> long term, Overpass API will produce GeoJSON to allow vector rendering.
> The main roadblocker for this is the distinction between linestrings and
> polygons. I assume that an established list of tags that designate areas
> are the best way to achieve this with long-term stable semantics.

I believe there is a project underway which produces vector tiles from an
osm2pgsql database. I have found that a database for rendering and a
database for reproducing .osm data tend to have some opposing requirements
that make me think that the osm2pgsql route will be better for vector tiles
for rendering and it might be best to concentrate efforts on this.