Hi Dave,

Most search engines treat white space as word delimiters, regardless of the actual character code or character string. Also various punctuation marks such as a dash.

Likewise it is entirely up to the renderer how to treat white space (or any other character) in rendering text. It is not obliged to honour non-breaking spaces, dashes and underscores if it doesn't want to.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Dave,

My apologies -- "Kidderminster Town" does indeed appear on two lines on the running-in board:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart166axe/33678173210

Martin.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your message.

I did not copy or paste HTML code. I typed ASCII character 160. It is a standard text character available on the keyboard and seems to me entirely appropriate within proper names to clarify the meaning. "Kidderminster Town" does not appear on two lines on the station running-in boards.

However, no-one in Kidderminster refers to the station by that name - it is the "Severn Valley Station". It is surely helpful to have local names shown on the map?

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your emails.

In the UK the area between the property boundaries on each side of a road is the "King's Highway", legally accessible to all on foot (with some exceptions, e.g. on motorways).

This area is often significantly wider than can be shown as a line element, such as the highway objects in OSM. See for example the A451/B4194 junction at:

osm.org/#map=19/52.33016/-2.29971

It is useful for pedestrians to know the size of this area, in judging whether a road can be safely walked along in heavy traffic.

Until recently I have been using the highway=pedestrian tag to represent these areas. It has been brought to my attention that this tag is intended for traffic-free areas. I have therefore been changing them to highway=footway.

I haven't added any more recently, only making these changes.

I have in the past asked for the correct way to tag highway *areas*, but never received any consensus in reply.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Brian,

From the wiki: "many mappers prefer the more specific tags landuse=meadow for meadows and pastures, landuse=orchard for fruit orchards, and use landuse=farmland for cropland only".

I agree that farm usage can change, but usually it is related to the type of soil. Water meadows liable to flooding and high hillsides are not suitable for arable crops. For set-aside land I tend to use landuse=grassland. Set-aside rules require some maintenance, if it was allowed to become unimproved scrub with small trees and bushes set-aside would not apply.

The welcome page: osm.org/welcome says the mapping should be "real" and current", so the fact that the usage may change after my visit is not relevant. The same applies to any piece of land in town or country.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Brian,

You said:

> We map what's there.

I am mapping what's there. There is an area alongside most roads which is public and accessible on foot. It's daft that OSM has no proper means of mapping this. There was a proposal for landuse=highway back in 2013 but inexplicably there were more votes against than for, and voting was suspended, see: osm.wiki/Proposed_features/landuse%3Dhighway

> We don't map for the standard render.

You may not, but I don't see why I shouldn't. When I started mapping there was no mention of not doing so in the welcome email, nor is there on the current Welcome page, see: osm.org/welcome

The only thing that was impressed on me is that you can't map the actual metalled surface of roads because that is done as a street map overlay at conventional width with no reference to the real width. Except of course that it isn't an overlay for tracks and green lanes which are rendered as single lines so that there is no distinction between the width of a track and a footpath. This also strikes me as daft in OSM -- even on OS Landrangers you can see a width difference between a track and a footpath.

In fact I'm not mapping for the standard render only, I check the appearance in all 4 renders on the OSM front page. Which covers the vast majority of OSM users.

But my main concern is not the rendering but that every square inch of land should have its use specified. Because in the real world there is no land which can't have its use described. I thought my original method of distinguishing between landuse boundaries and property boundaries was a reasonable compromise, taking landuse to the highway centre-line and allowing the road overlay to define the property boundary. I specifically asked about this when I started mapping and was told that either method was acceptable. You were the one who objected to this and created areas of no man's land alongside roads where previously there was none. I'm simply trying to fill those areas back in with something meaningful.

For country areas I will try landuse=grass but clearly that is going to look daft (and is not true) in built-up areas. See for example Stourport High Street: osm.org/#map=19/52.33940/-2.28000 At zoom level 19 the rendered road overlay is much narrower than the actual street width. The same applies to a great many places (and the square in front of the Manor Arms at Abberley).

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Brian,

Sorry, I didn't know I have broken anything. You marked a vast single area as landuse=farmland which is very difficult to edit in the iD editor, because it can't download all of it at the zoom level at which editing is possible.

You marked as farmland (i.e. cultivated land) for some areas which are in fact meadows, pasture, scrub, plant nurseries, etc. As I know the area, I'm trying to create more accurate mapping. I'm in the middle of doing it, and will ensure it covers the area you originally mapped as farmland before I finish. Probably later today.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Brian,

You are the one who disrupted my previous mapping by unpicking landuse boundaries from highway centre-lines, leaving an area of no man's land between property boundaries on each side of a road. I don't think it is acceptable to create areas of no landuse, where previously there was something mapped.

Legally the area between the property boundaries is the public highway, accessible on foot. If you can suggest a better landuse for this than pedestrian I will happily use it instead. But note that landuse=highway is deprecated (and doesn't render}.

cheers,

Martin.

p.s. Mike,
According to the Wiki, yes="The public has an official, legally-enshrined right of access; i.e., it's a right of way."
These paths are not public rights of way. The public have a right of access to the land they cross, subject to certain conditions. But the actual route or existence of a path has no legal protection.
cheers, Martin.

Hi Mike,
In the iD editor, when you set some things, other things change automatically. I don't recall setting access=private or highway=footway. I selected "Foot Path" from the menu, and set foot=yes (the need to do that for a foot path is not clear to me).
Whatever, it is not showing access=private now. Did you change it?
What is the proper way to show a footpath which is not a public right of way but which crosses Access Land?

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Mike,

You have rather lost me. The land is private, owned by the Forestry Commission. There is no public right of way on these footpaths. There are on Access Land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. That means the landowner can under certain circumstances temporarily close the area (for example if tree felling is taking place), or modify the route, or eliminate them as physical paths entirely provided access to the land remains.

On the other hand, if they were public rights of way, in order to temporarily close them the County Council would need to make and publish a legal Traffic Order to that effect, and it would be possible to object to it.

Are you planning to walk them? It is about 12 months since I last visited the area, but it is only a couple of miles from home so I could go and check the current status for you?

I will try to find out the exact position on mountain bike access in Ribbesford Woods and modify the OSM settings accordingly.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your message. This is Forestry Commision land, which means that under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 it is "Access Land" with the right to roam on foot anywhere except within 20 metres of a dwelling (unless on a public right of way). The distinction between an historic public right of way and the right to roam is a bit of a grey area. However, these paths are not marked as public rights of way on the OS maps.

These are narrow muddy foot paths through the heart of the forest, so not suitable for any other means of transport except perhaps mountain bikes. The Forestry Commission have laid out mountain bike trails elsewhere in Ribbesford Woods, I'm not sure if they allow bikes to go anywhere.

I have changed the access for bikes to permissive, I hope that's ok?

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Mike,
As I understand it, that applies to 3-figure A roads, not necessarily 4-figure roads?
This is a newly constructed road through a new housing development still under construction (on the site of a former sugar factory). I was surprised to see it given an A number - having driven along it I certainly wouldn't regard it as a primary or trunk road. Small roundabouts, and with multiple residential side roads. A B number would have been more appropriate.
There is no significant primary or trunk east-west traffic between the A442 and A451 at this location, it is essentially local traffic.
Seeing how much was spent on it, I could have suggested much better uses for the money. No doubt the explanation is that it was covered by a Section 106 agreement with the developers.
cheers,
Martin.

p.s. I have been there. I use Google Streetview only to confirm my memory of what I saw. Mostly I use OS OpenData to align buildings, water-courses, etc. Also the NLS 25K maps are very useful. The Bing aerial is very poor quality for seeing details.

Will the NLS 25" historic maps ever be available in the editor? That would be great. Often farm tracks, field boundaries, public footpaths, etc. haven't changed for 100 years.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Phil,

It is clearly not scrub. There is a suggestion on the Wiki to make it village_green for public green space, but that doesn't sound right here.

If you want to visit a proper municipal park, it is likely to have a name, such as "Jubilee Gardens" or whatever.

p.s. I have started reverting the SVR to "preserved" but I'm not happy about it. For example it makes the platforms much more prominent than the tracks when zoomed out, which looks silly.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Ed, You wrote " (in this case I'd have probably extended the residential area across the residential roads to the edge of the grass area)."

This surely illustrates my point - a road is no more a residential area than it is a park.

I found this on the Wiki: "If you choose to let a landuse area end at a road, you have a choice of either re-using the nodes of the way representing the road, or drawing the boundary using new nodes next to the road. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, and neither is clearly "wrong" as long as highway landuse is not mapped." See: landuse=residential

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Phil,
I use "park" for any public green space with trees or shrubs, because there doesn't seem to be any other designation available. I have noticed the same used in lots of other places on OSM. "Grass" is ok for plain grass, but this clearly isn't that - see: https://goo.gl/maps/LPuDqLwdNrP2

It's a "land-use" boundary, so you can't have a boundary without something on the other side, otherwise it wouldn't be a boundary. If taken only to the kerb, you then need a "road surface" land use for the middle bit, and I haven't been able to find one. It would be a massive waste of effort anyway, because OSM draws roads symbolically over the top without regard to the actual width. In that circumstance, taking boundaries to the road centre-line is the sensible thing to do, and produces the neatest results at different zoom levels.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your reply.

I would think that OSM is primarily a map (the clue being in the name), rather than a database. A map should show what is physically present on the ground, which in this case is a standard-gauge railway in working order. The frequency and types of trains doesn't change its physical existence. I note that the Ordnance Survey maps do not show the SVR in any different style from other single-track railways, so I'm not clear why OSM should treat it differently in terms of its actual appearance on the map.

cheers,

Martin.

Hi Phil,

I was trying to get OSM to show the line through Bewdley Tunnel as a dotted line. If I set railway=preserved it shows the line in pale grey and there is no difference for the track in the tunnel - which looks daft under Birchen Coppice.

I don't think the SVR calls itself a preserved railway any more. It is a primarily a tourist attraction and calls itself a "Heritage Steam Railway". Many other similar lines do the same. (I tried setting railway=heritage and it vanished off the map entirely.) The note for railway=rail says "rails of standard gauge track" which does describe it exactly. I have now tried adding tourism=heritage_steam_railway, which seems to work, so I will add that to more sections.

Looking at some of my photographs of the line from BR days, the line today clearly isn't a preservation of much of that. For example the entire Kidderminster station was built new in the 1980s, and to be a "preservation" of anything it should be a goods yard. Ditto the Engine House and the new work now going on at Bridgnorth. None of that is a preservation of anything, and as the years go by there will be more of the same. "Preservation" was a suitable word to describe the early efforts of the volunteers who rescued the line in the 1960s, but I don't think it fits the line today.

best regards,

Martin.

Sorry, I may have got that wrong. It definitely has a parish church (St Bartholomew's) and the parish boundary is the River Severn. That is also the boundary of the electoral wards for the Town Council. See: http://www.wyreforestdc.gov.uk/media/979858/Areley-Kings-Riverside-Ward-Polling-Districts.pdf

cheers,

Martin.