We got this generally sorted out on the US talk list, but I have a follow-up question where I feel like I need the wisdom of the ORM mailing list more specifically.
We have a long term need in North America to preface our current combination of [ref=*] [name=*] for labelling of main tracks with these reporting marks, which is what got us started on the initial question about the tag a week and a half ago. It's a universal industry mapping standard here, and ORM won't be considered usable by the majority of potential users here until we get that done ... but we're a long way off, and right now I'm only concerned with a very specific question.
In the vast majority of cases here, lines have a single operator, but there are many, many cases of multiple secondary operators (there is always one primary operator, who is almost always the owner of the infrastructure). I'm going to pick a specific example I have with three operators just to have a simple case to discuss. Ordinarily, for tags with multiple values, the convention is to separate them with a semicolon (example reporting_marks="NS;CA;NPBL"). However, my question is - there is a specific industry standard way this information needs to be rendered on the map later, and that is "NS (CA, NPBL)", where all secondary operators are enclosed in parentheses and comma separated. Later map labelling would be simpler if we just entered this tag value as it's meant to be labeled. However, is there a reason we should enter it in the normal, semicolon-delimited way, knowing we'll have to do something more complicated later with a renderer to make this come out usable? My main thought is, I know there are many other users of this overall data set, and having the multiple operators listed in the display format may break a potential future use I'm not aware of.
Which way is it better to format the data, and why? I have just enough ability to read/play with CartoCSS and MapCSS to look through a setup file and understand what it's doing, but not enough to actually set up a new rendering style; so, I also don't have the experience to know if re-presenting the semicolon-delimited data the proper way for the rendering is easy to do with the standard rendering stack, either. My initial thought of entering the data in the presentation format (
"NS (CA, NPBL)" example), is that it makes rendering blindingly simple, as
[reporting_marks=*] [ref=*] [name=*].
I definitely appreciate any input anyone could offer. Thanks!
Chuck
VA, USA