[OSM-talk] Area tags in Overpass API

[Martin Raifer]

Am 24.03.2013, 15:40 Uhr, schrieb Tobias Knerr <osm at tobias-knerr.de>:

> The wiki actually offers machine readable templates on the Key:* and
> Tag:* pages with boolean flags such as onWay and onArea, which are
> currently parsed by Taginfo and offered though the Taginfo API. Without
> doubt there are errors in these wiki templates, but I believe that they
> are the most comprehensive source of documented area tags.

The wiki (and thus also taginfo) has information about where a tag can be  
used on, but not whether the tag defines an area or not. See the following  
examples:

* natural=cliff has onWay=true and onArea=true and defines a way as an  
area, if the way forms a closed loop.
* name=* also has onWay=true and onArea=true, but does not define any way  
as an area.
* highway=* has onArea=false, but if combined with area=yes (or any other  
area-defining tag) the way is still an area.

We would need a flag like "definesArea" (in addition to "onArea") in order  
to write an area-detection algorithm based on the wiki alone.

Martin / tyr_asd