The attached patch is an attempt to improve the reliability and flexibility for displaying highway shields. It does the following: 1. Removes the alpha balancing coding. (This coding checked that values for signs were primarily numeric, and therefore prevented refs such as "QEW" from being displayed as highway shields.) 2. Removes ALL spaces from refs, so that the complete ref will be displayed in the shield. (Previously only the first space was removed, which caused refs like "B 1 2" to be displayed as "B1" in the shield.) 3. Checks, after spaces have been removed, if the ref is too long to be displayed in a shield. If the ref is too long, the shield code will not be added; the road label will displayed normally. The maximum length of the ref is determined in the following manner: 3.1. The default of 8 characters is used. This is the previous behaviour. 3.2. If a colon character (":") followed by a number is appended to the highway symbol in the style file, that number will override the maximum length. Example: "highway-symbol:box:6" sets the maximum to 6 characters. 3.3. If an additional colon character followed by a number is appended to the highway symbol, this second number will be used as the maximum length for alpha only refs. Example: "highway-symbol:box:6:4" sets the maximum to 6 for numeric and alphanumeric refs, but 4 for alpha only refs. I use the following in my style file: '${ref|highway-symbol:box:6:4}' This sets the maximum length of alphanumeric shields to be 6 (e.g., M1234a, or 123456), and alpha only shields to be 4 (e.g., ABCD). Such a setting works well for me in the areas I am interested in. It prevents labels such as "Südring" from being displayed as shields, but catches most other refs which can reasonably be displayed in shields. The approach of this patch allows creative mappers to have a certain amount of control over shield display, but still preserves the default behaviour of the