OpenStreetMap
I’ve been working on a JOSM script to expand abbreviated street names. There are hundreds (if not thousands) in the Plainfield, IL area.
This is extremely tedious work without so form of automation. So far I have reviewed every name change and it’s been working awesome.
I wrote up instructions at the GitHub link above. Give it a try yourself or let me know if you find an area with a lot of abbreviated names.
Discussion
Comment from Warin61 on 20 February 2017 at 08:17
Problems?
St at the end of the string is usually Street St can also be Saint … usually first in the string.
I think the first need to expand those things that are abbreviations at the end of the string. To me these are by far more common.
A full stop at the end of the string should simply be removed … that would then make all the abbreviation that ended with a full stop be found without including the full stop variation. Of course the remove of the full stop should only take place if an abbreviation is found.
Capitalization of the first letter also occurs in the abbreviations .. so these too need to be found and expand.
Comment from Carnildo on 21 February 2017 at 22:07
Which expansion of MT HIGHLAND DR would you recommend? Is it “Mount Highland Drive”, or “Montana Highland Drive”? Or just plain “Mt Highland”, as Google seems to think?
Comment from cowdog on 22 February 2017 at 03:03
@Carnildo, I would go with “Mount”. It makes sense, and it matched the Tiger 2015 data.
Comment from cowdog on 22 February 2017 at 03:05
@Warin61, Great suggestion. It always pays to check everything manually, but more sensible defaults don’t hurt. I’ll probably add this to the script whenever I get around to it.
Comment from Viajero Perdido on 3 May 2017 at 20:27
Hi.
Please do not automate expansion of suffixes like “NW” to “North-west” without first verifying that the municipality actually uses the more verbose version (mine doesn’t, the official names are Blah Blah NW), and secondly, checking the wiki for local practice.
Calgary and Edmonton, for example.
Comment from Viajero Perdido on 27 January 2018 at 18:34
Undoing automated work (for reasons given directly above) is even MORE tedious than clicking a GO button on a script.