[OSM-talk] Distribution of OSM ids could be much more useful!

[Victor Shcherb]

Hi All,

As we know OSM id for nodes exceeded long time ago 2^32 and keep growing on
the other hand the ids itself are pretty useless because they don't
represent history good enough and also they couldn't implement principle of
Permanent ID (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Permanent_ID).

I suggest to discuss geometrical value of OSM id per node. Of course there
is ongoing discussion to attach OSM nodes to ways, so the number of nodes
will decrease dramatically but that's a long-mid term strategy. Much easier
is to give some value to OSM ID.

PROPOSAL. Dedicate 30 bits of OSM ids to the quadrant of the Globe (per
square radiant) i.e. last *30 bits *of the ID could represent *15th zoom of
globe radiant tile *(not Mercatoor projection tiles).

What's useful.
1. Programs to import OSM could process it much faster cause id in the ways
could indicate where physically the way is located.
2. Programs that store IDs could store much more compressed i.e. OsmAnd
maps could benefit for storing maps in QuadTile structure and keep only
part of id attached to QuadTile
3. It is a step forward to compress the data and have formats for faster
processing and better storage.
4. Probably something more?

Why it is easy to implement.
- Doesn't require to change anything in the schema and in the tools
- Most likely doesn't require to change any editor cause the changes could
be postprocessed by the changeset commiter.
- *Backward compatible!* Old ids before the given number could stay the
same for a while.

Challenges / Objections.
- If you move a node from its original tile the history will be lost and id
will be changed (I doubt it is a strong objection cause information could
be partially / visually restored from changeset history).
- The uploading changeset from editor could differ from result changeset
stored in OSM API.

What do you think?

Best Regards,
Victor
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