Ralf Kleineisel wrote:
The wiki says: The example photos there support this.
And the other pages say otherwise. As you say, example photos, not definition photos. The text and the pictures in the wiki have been changed to each and every direction so many times that none will be able to force their view on all pages - and even more so to check that all use cases in the database comply with that changed form. The status quo is to keep the mixed and varying "definitions" scattered on lots of pages and try to live with that. All attempts have stopped at people stating the facts and their opinions of how things should be and shouldn't be - and often with uncompatible constraints. And sadly no one noticed soon enough after the path was introduced, that the documentation for the equivalence was written in the wrong direction. So some took it for granted that they were only ways-with-blue-signs, others kept using the style they were since the beginning. Given any mapped footway/cycleway, you can not know if it has a "blue sign" (or a local equivalent). All these arguments, and various common interpretations are listed at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Consolidation_footway_cycleway_path The section "Current situation" lists why it's impossible to claim that footway or cycleway is anyhow clearly defined to be limited to (with the blue signs) signposted ways. It also in a way lists what the interpretations have in common. Redefining tag meanings only in the wiki will never work, as somebody would have to inspect, for example, all the 1.3 million ways already tagged with footway.
The word "designated" says that there is a sign, doesn't it?
That is only one meaning of the word, and requiring a sign wasn't the way footway/cycleway were used before path. If a way is legal (or even "possible", think narrow urban stuff) only for pedestrians, setting up or omitting any signs (not forbidding pedestrians, naturally) doesn't make it anything else than a footway. Likewise ways with a "no motor vehicles" sign are often cycleways - only pedestrians and cyclists are allowed and do use them, even if a different sign would imply otherwise a bit different traffic rules on those ways. -- Alv _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
