Talk:Elements

From OpenStreetMap

Direction of segments in area

Does anybody know why segments in area have to go in one direction? It is very difficult (and sometimes impossible) to share segments between streets and areas, so I see just one way how to draw areas - make fake segments very near to street's segments. --jenda 15:29, 7 July 2007 (BST)

Same information as Data Primitives. Merge?

This Elements page has pretty much the same information as Data Primitives. The only slight difference is that Data Primitives talks about the underlying data representation slightly more. e.g. a segment references two node ids. OK that's information which a user (mapper) doesn't need to know, but it doesn't really hurt to know it, and apart from that, there's very little difference between the two pages.

We either should merge these pages ...or we should pick through the 'what links here' lists and carefully choose which of the two pages we should be linking to in each case, and also think about how the naming could be improved. e.g. should 'Data Primitives' be renamed 'Element Data', to give it a clearer relationship with this 'Elements' page?

Personally I'm erring on the side of a merge, but then we still need to chose which page is a better name.

Maybe this is one for the WikiProject Cleanup list -- Harry Wood 12:21, 17 July 2007 (BST)

The content of Data Primitive is more for a developer ("object class"), the content of Elements for a mapper (what is to do). Both pages are not complete regarding the own theme. E.g. in Data Primitive are missing the syntaxes of id/from/to/...; id lower than 0 is possible, but causes by the parser an automatic assignment of id and so on. The informations are more in more time. The informations for a developer (what is an id?) is confusing for a mapper. In this case it seems to be better to separate. --OnTour 22:37, 19 July 2007 (BST)

Yeah I understand the reasons why you might want it to be separate pages, but I'm thinking from a wiki organisational perspective, its easier to have the information in one place (only one page to maintain/link to). It's swings and roundabouts really, but if we are keeping them separate, then maybe 'Data Primitives' should be renamed 'Element Data'. -- Harry Wood 10:57, 20 July 2007 (BST)

I'd welcome a merge - or a clear separation which term does apply in which contect. What are Elements, compared to Data primitives, what's the difference between keys, features, tags, attributes and properties, ... See e.g. XML_Schema which still names area as one of the base types and does not list relations. --Traut 11:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Area and Relations

Area on this article is listed as if it was an element (node, way, area). I'd recommend to use the same order as in Data Primitives: node and way, but closed way and area as special types of way.

The newer element Relations is not listed yet. --Traut 11:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)