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Both tag names and value formats vary from region to region, and that's probably why almost any proprietary maps software is much more useful than OSM apps. Th

Both tag names and value formats vary from region to region, and that's probably why almost any proprietary maps software is much more useful than OSM apps. That's a pretty bold statement. There is certainly lots of variation in usage, but commonly used tags are used pretty consistently, the variation is largely in things that "almost any proprietary maps software" doesn't even bother with.

clnq 4y ago
I don't think this is a bold statement at all. I agree with you about "pretty consistently", but that is not consistent enough for many uses. Let's say I want my maps application to know whether a building is commercial or residential. Some buildings have building=residential, others have building=yes or building=oui, and others just have landuse=commercial (or landuse=residential, suburban, quarter, suburb, neighbourhood, or residential=yes, or residential=apartments). This is not the worst-case scenario; we can write an interpreting adapter for these tags. But somewhere in the world, there will be edge-case tags the adapter won't handle. And it is challenging to use that approach for applications that tens of thousands of users will see and scrutinize.
- Hasnep 4y ago
  Zooming in on my hometown the buildings that I expect to be commercial are tagged as commercial, but on Google maps the same buildings are pretty inconsistently coloured. Are there other commercial maps that do a good job at that?
  - clnq 4y ago
    I don't know off the top of my head. But missing tags or mistagging is a slightly different problem than tags that are difficult to parse. What's un/mistagged can be corrected in a crowd-sourced way (as Google Maps is doing). What's challenging to parse continues to be so no matter how much crowd-sourcing is present. The solution is straightforward for OSM - standardize the tags. It's been a long debate in OSM, but I hope the commercial influence will make them do it. There are practically no downsides and significant benefits.
- rmc 4y ago
  > Some buildings have ... have building=yes or building=oui There are 435,057,783 building=yes, and 1 building=oui. The OSM community has standardized. https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=yes https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=yes https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=oui https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=oui
  - habi 4y ago
    `building=oui` is wrong and was corrected.
bombolo 4y ago
Uh? Where I live, if I want to walk (trail or just to a friend) OSM is superior to google maps. Maps is better because it has all the shops and opening times… which might be out of date by a year or two.

clnq 4y ago

I don't think this is a bold statement at all. I agree with you about "pretty consistently", but that is not consistent enough for many uses. Let's say I want my maps application to know whether a building is commercial or residential. Some buildings have building=residential, others have building=yes or building=oui, and others just have landuse=commercial (or landuse=residential, suburban, quarter, suburb, neighbourhood, or residential=yes, or residential=apartments). This is not the worst-case scenario; we can write an interpreting adapter for these tags. But somewhere in the world, there will be edge-case tags the adapter won't handle. And it is challenging to use that approach for applications that tens of thousands of users will see and scrutinize.

Hasnep 4y ago
Zooming in on my hometown the buildings that I expect to be commercial are tagged as commercial, but on Google maps the same buildings are pretty inconsistently coloured. Are there other commercial maps that do a good job at that?
- clnq 4y ago
  I don't know off the top of my head. But missing tags or mistagging is a slightly different problem than tags that are difficult to parse. What's un/mistagged can be corrected in a crowd-sourced way (as Google Maps is doing). What's challenging to parse continues to be so no matter how much crowd-sourcing is present. The solution is straightforward for OSM - standardize the tags. It's been a long debate in OSM, but I hope the commercial influence will make them do it. There are practically no downsides and significant benefits.
rmc 4y ago
> Some buildings have ... have building=yes or building=oui There are 435,057,783 building=yes, and 1 building=oui. The OSM community has standardized. https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=yes https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=yes https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=oui https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=oui
- habi 4y ago
  `building=oui` is wrong and was corrected.

bombolo 4y ago

Uh? Where I live, if I want to walk (trail or just to a friend) OSM is superior to google maps. Maps is better because it has all the shops and opening times… which might be out of date by a year or two.