[OSM-talk] What3words

[Barry Hunter]

On 22 November 2015 at 11:07, Colin Smale  wrote:

>  I guess there would be no objections to someone adding
> addr:w3w:en=nice.place.here ? Or addr:w3w=en:nice.place.here ?
>

Ok, so turning it around, what would be the benefit of this? Why bother?
What purpose does it serve?




The only purpose I see, it then serves as an independent database of w3w's.
Persuming the database is comprehensive enough could perform a lookup via
the OSM database to find the location of a given set of words.

But as then it effectively makes the proprietary 'app' redundant,
 what3words themselves might then take exception to it anyway. And/or might
infringe database right.



As I see it what3words is not really 'andress' system. Its a coordinate
system. Its a way of encoding a location in a series of words. OSM
generally uses decimal Lat/Long as its encoding.

OSM doesnt store every known coordinate in the system. Like
addr:mgrs=4QFJ.1234.6789
or British National Grid. Or Indian Grid. Or UTM Coordinates. etc

There are lots of ways of encoding coordinates. Each with (generally) a
well known conversion from WGS84 lat/long (complicated by the fact there
may be a datum transformation needed)

If end user wants to use a given system, then can use that conversion. They
dont need to exist in the database.
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