[OSM-talk] Relevance of the “name” tag in places where there is no obvious associated language

[Maarten Deen]

On 2019-12-06 14:11, Martin Constantino–Bodin wrote:

>> Removing the name tag does not solve any problem. The renderer for
>> the map (or any program that needs to display the name tag) needs to
>> make a decision which tag to display. If the name tag is not present
>> it will have to fall back to another one.
>> In cases where you are running a program on your computer, this
>> decision might be easy: the language setting of your computer (like
>> JOSM does). In cases where you make something for a general
>> audience, that decision will not be so easy. Then you will get into
>> this discussion about "what language is used most" or "we don't feel
>> comfortable having an in our eyes non-neutral language pushed up to
>> us".
> 
> I agree that it does not entirely solve the problem. It however
> partially solves it: in most contexts, there is a default language
> defined. Be it the language of the computer (as you said for JOSM), of
> the browser (and, if we look at the HTTP_ACCEPT header, there might
> even be more than one!), or some rendering options. If one is printing
> a map, there is generally a context around (the language of the book,
> or the place—which is usually the same than the computer’s on
> which the map is being generated).
> 
> Maybe I’ve misunderstood have you mean by “general audience”
> here. I would greatly appreciate example where there is no available
> default language indirectly provided by the user (’s system) or
> context.

You understand correctly. And yes, you can guess a users language from 
either http headers or geolocation or even a cookie. But the issue there 
currently is, is that there is one Mapnik map with the captions rendered 
in the tiles. To do something about that you would need to make a 
different caption layer and present the one you think is right for the 
user viewing the map as an overlay over a non-captioned Mapnik map.
Or you have to make different Mapnik styles for different languages and 
present them also based on those criterea.
Or, as I suggested before: make your own map. The german community has 
one with a different style and lots of placed rendered in German and 
English.

A problem with that is that it takes much more time and storage to make 
those tiles.
I know google does something like it but does it IMHO in a bad way 
because for me it translates every place into a Dutch name, giving rise 
to oddities as Ariën-aan-de-Leie. So if you want to go that way, expect 
it to be less than trivial.

>> The problem arises out of one of the general OSM principles: use the
>> name that is verifiable on the ground. This does not work well for
>> oceans or any international body. No ocean has a sign affixed to it
>> with its name (well, there might be signposts in different countries
>> pointing to it).
> 
> This is a great point. To me, it seems to point to removing the
> “name” tag on such places: this information doesn’t correspond
> to anything “real” (but the “name:en” does). And I don’t
> even mind if some careless renderers just use “name:en” as a
> default is the tag “name” is absent: it’s something that should
> be parametric, but a renderer might just have be designed specifically
> for English, so whatever.

And I would be violently against removing name tags for such places. 
Oleksiy Muzalyev makes a great point why you should not remove name tags 
from places. It makes them unfindable. You can not find something which 
is not in the OSM database. Having them rendered in an unwanted language 
seems to me to be much more desirable than not being able to find them 
at all.

Regards,
Maarten