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Is there a convention for escaping the semicolon in a tag value when a semicolon needs to be part of the data value instead of denoting multiple values? I am looking at the generic issue not a particular case.

asked 25 Nov '14, 22:28

nabramovitz's gravatar image

nabramovitz
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edited 25 Nov '14, 23:41

aseerel4c26's gravatar image

aseerel4c26 ♦
32.6k18248554

2

Are you asking as a mapper or a data consumer? If as a data consumer, then you're going to have to deal with all sorts of stuff that doesn't particularly correspond to the wiki. I'd suggest using "taginfo" to search for the sort of things that you're interested in to see what values you get:

http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/

(26 Nov '14, 00:31) SomeoneElse ♦

Not yet. IMHO ;; would be best, but I'm sure that there are other opinions.

permanent link

answered 25 Nov '14, 23:01

SimonPoole's gravatar image

SimonPoole ♦
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… in our wiki's HO ";;" is suggested, too.

(25 Nov '14, 23:41) aseerel4c26 ♦

Thanks, Can I hope that your 'not yet' means there are plans to do something? If not, Is there a place to register an enhancement request or add myself as watcher of an existing request?

(26 Nov '14, 00:00) nabramovitz
1

There have been multiple discussion wrt multi-valuued tags this year on the tagging mailing list, IMHO this would be the best place to propose.

(26 Nov '14, 00:03) SimonPoole ♦
1

Thanks aseerel4c26, I did not scroll down far enough to see those extra sections about ;; and using name space.

Thanks SimonPoole, I will attempt to follow the discussion.

The cuisine tag looks to be pain to work with since I will need to customize the search to actually use the multiple values in a future sprint. Oh well

(26 Nov '14, 00:20) nabramovitz

@nabramovitz: Alternatively people could stop using the ";" with the cuisine tag. ;-) … And instead use namespaced tags with boolean values (in addition, for compatibility with the simple scheme). E.g. (hypothetical) cuisine=german, cuisine:german=yes, cuisine:italian=yes instead of cusine=german;italian. Assuming that the German food in this restaurant is a bit more on the menu or more popular.

(26 Nov '14, 00:34) aseerel4c26 ♦
2

Namespaced tags are actually mostly misnamed, they should really be called hey:I:have:found:a:stupid:way:of:moving:values:in:to:the:key:space tags.

(26 Nov '14, 01:02) SimonPoole ♦

@SimonPoole: haha, thanks (+1)! :-) Do you have got a better suggestion? Actually I think that approach is fixing some problems of the ";". However, I am quite aware that it may create others.

(26 Nov '14, 01:48) aseerel4c26 ♦
1

Namespaced tags work well if they are used for a well defined set of subkeys that actually have multiple possible values. When they are simply used to explode the key space they don't solve anything, in particular they don't make the data any more consumable than using the ";" notation for lists or sets of values.

(26 Nov '14, 16:24) SimonPoole ♦

@SimonPoole: In my cusisine=german;italian example I could search for simple cuisine:german=yes tags without needing any chopping up / substring / regex search inside the values. But I guess that discussion should end here. Thanks for your comment.

(26 Nov '14, 22:05) aseerel4c26 ♦
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question asked: 25 Nov '14, 22:28

question was seen: 4,584 times

last updated: 26 Nov '14, 22:05

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum