[OSM-talk] keys with multiple values

[Andrew Hain]

Paul Norman <penorman <at> mac.com> writes:

> I believe with TIGER these were not alternate names, but different 
> names, none of which were clearly main or alternates in the data. It's 
> one of those things that makes raw TIGER data a pain to work with.
> 
> That situation is distinct from when you have a primary name and 
> multiple alternate names, although in practice many of the TIGER cases 
> had a primary name, or one of the alternate names wasn't really a name.

Alternative names in OSM come in two types: names to display (with tags such
as name:fr) and names to search for. Although a semicolon-separated list is
more logical in some ways than artificially separating into multiple tags,
it is makes a difference from searching alternative display names. 

> TIGER is also not where to look to for good tagging practices. For 
> various reasons, there were numerous problems with the tagging.

It was a learning experience. The red tape at the beginning of this
discussion is one of the legacies.

--
Andrew