[OSM-talk] tag with value lists Was: Proposed mechanical edit to convert alt_name tags

Christoph Hormann chris_hormann at gmx.de
Mon Sep 8 21:17:31 UTC 2014


On Monday 08 September 2014, Andrew Buck wrote:
>
> My understanding was that since almost nothing actually understands
> the ; separator that doing it as multiple tags is the preferred
> system.

That does not seem quite comprehensible to me.

Note there have been placename imports using the semicolon variant 
extensively, like from NGA GNS, see:

http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/?key=source&value=NGA%20GNS#combinations

many of the alt_name/alt_name:en there are semicolon separated lists.  
Nominatim does not seem to have a problem with those.

From the viewpoint of a data interpreter the semicolon lists are usually 
much easier to process than an unlimited number of separate name tags.  
Likewise for editing.

Given that neither alt_name_x nor alt_name:x are documented in the wiki, 
both variants are hardly used anywhere except western Africa and the 
semicolon list variant is actually used frequently elsewhere i would 
strongly suggest if you want to do a mechanical edit you change those 
to a semicolon list.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/



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