OpenStreetMap

I've been working on making some of the Kathmandu mapping better based on my local knowledge.

A few questions I wonder about:
- how to name things so that they show up in both English and Nepali? I want the Nepali name to be present and highlighted, but also the English name, as people using both languages want to use OSM.

- in Nepal, intersections are also the names used for entire neighborhoods. I have been labeling intersection nodes with names of these neighborhoods, but how do I make sure the name is rendered so its well displayed on the map? I found one intersection/neighborhood (Chabahil) labeled as place=town. Is this appropriate?

Discussion

Comment from chillly on 2 July 2011 at 15:56

When you say "displayed on the map", I expect you mean the Mapnik map on the OSM website. This is just one example of a map derived from OSM data. You can render your own map with different rules so multiple language names appear. There are an increasing number of renderers available, see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Renderer for more details.

If you want parts of a city to have district names the convention seems to be to use place=suburb + name=*, even though this is not what a suburb really is. I would consider adding a node with these tags right next to the crossroads.

Comment from z-dude on 2 July 2011 at 17:10

There's a few variations of the name tag
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Name

name=Irgendwas (the default name, used locally)
name:en=Something (the name in English)

In addition to place=suburb there is also place=locality
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Place

Comment from chillly on 2 July 2011 at 17:32

place=locality is not intended for use in a city. Locality is intended as a place that is named but has no population - not likely in a city.

Comment from z-dude on 2 July 2011 at 21:32

There is no restriction on placing localities within cities.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place%3Dlocality

Places like Times Square, or Picadilly Circus are intersections just like the places that Prabhasp described.

Comment from prabhasp on 3 July 2011 at 01:10

Thank you both for your comments. I will explore the place=suburb and place=locality options, and figure out which one is best. Although OSM says "don't tag for the renderer," in a case like Nepal's where we have to advocate for wider use of OSM[.org, and the Mapnik renderer is default so thats what most will use...] as well as built the map itself, I find myself really torn.

Some of the "towns" here, for example, are labeled with
name=Lalitpur ललितपुर
instead of
name=ललिरपुर
name:en=Lalitpur
etc., and I'm sure its for the [Mapnik] renderer. The renderer shows the place name in both English and Nepali, and it looks beautiful. I think this might be something for the default renderers to think about--how to help maps in non-English spoken places with large tourist populations to be most useful.

Comment from Zartbitter on 3 July 2011 at 12:35

if you really want to use something like

name=Lalitpur ललितपुर

then please add these language tags, too:

name:en=Lalitpur
name:ne=ललितपुर

Comment from prabhasp on 3 July 2011 at 12:40

@Zartbitter: I'm not sure what I want to use; I was commenting on what is already is use.

Log in to leave a comment