[mkgmap-dev] Omitting ref from named minor roads

Thu Apr 7 12:41:56 BST 2011

Marko Mäkelä <marko.makela at 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.

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