Marko Mäkelä <marko.makela@iki.fi> writes:
A fellow mapper complained that some highways carry a 5-digit ref on the mkgmap-produced map, even though the ref is nowhere to be seen on street signs. OK, mkgmap cannot possibly know that, but I was wondering if we could split this rule in the default style:
highway=* {name '${ref} ${name}' | '${ref}' | '${name}' }
so that we would assign '${ref} ${name}' only to highway=tertiary, and assign either $name or $ref to lesser roads:
highway=tertiary {name '${ref} ${name}' | '${ref}' | '${name}' } highway=* {name '${name}' | '${ref}' }
For example, a railway=platform that is also tagged as highway=footway would continue to carry the platform $ref, provided that the way is not named.
Would anyone object to this change? Does anyone need to see both $name and $ref on highways lesser than tertiary?
I don't follow how your patch preserves the old behavior on secondary/primary/motorway. I'm assuming that there are some roads that have reference numbers in county road maintenance databases, but they aren't posted and only serious road nerds know about them. That's not true in my state, or if so they are really not well known. I have been in Virginia and seen 4-digit route numbers in use (in directions given to me, and on signs). The roads were probably tertiary. I don't object to your change, but this feels like a shortcut rather than the right behavior. The route reference should show up if it's useful to the user, which is a cartographic decision. We have a vector database, but it makes sense to encode there where a route reference is user-facing or merely administrative. That's not rendering per se, but a fact about the world that's legitimate to tag. But, it's harder.