Am Sonntag, 19. Juli 2020, 04:55:39 CEST schrieb João Ferreira:

Hey everyone! Hope y’all are well.

I’m João Ferreira, aka HedgiePT, a (noob) mapper from Portugal. I tasked myself with kickstarting the signal scheme for all Portuguese railways, and I have a few questions that weren’t answered by the Wiki:

It seems like every signal requires its own name in this scheme. How does this apply to variations of, say, speed limits? Germany gives different names to 'sign' and 'light' forms.

This is just because both forms exist, and they are different and distinguishable. Light forms also often can show more than one aspect, e.g. depending on the direction taken on the next swi4tch(es).

Is this a requirement? Also, our distant speed limit signals <=40 km/h have a yellow colour, versus white for >40 km/h. Are these different names as well? Or are the names just for cataloguing purposes and aren’t all that important for rendering? It seems that, despite all this, the same name applies to all different values of a speed limit. Is this true?

It depends. If your signal book says that _all_ signals <=40 are yellow, and the others are white, and the signals have otherwise the same "name" and just a different aspect, then they are the same. The differences will then just happen in the images used for the renderer.

Example: all German "track speed" signals are called Lf7 (Langsamfahrsignal, i.e. slow drive signal, type 7) and are signs. There are other types of Lf signals, i.e. the pre-announcement ones are Lf6. The ones found on main and other signals, that give an additional, let's say "local" limit, are called Zs3: Zusatzsignal = extra signal, because they (usually) are attached to another main signal. They exist both as speed and light forms.

So a track speed signal of 100 kph is called "Lf7 10", one for 10 kph is "Lf7 1". So they are all the same type, just different aspects. If your 40 kph signals are called "ys40" (yellow speed 40), but your 50 kph ones are called ws50, then they are different types. If they are just called s40 and s50, then they are the same. This all depends on your local workrules, in case of Germany DE:ESO (German Eisenbahn Signal Ordnung, train signal orders).

When you define the tagging scheme please stick to the CC:WWW:SSS scheme, Country, Workrules name, signalname, in our case the whole thing is called DE:ESO:Lf7. There are other workrules e.g. for tram lines in Germany, so a track speed limit signal for a local tram line with the same meaning as the Lf7 may have a name of DE:FooTram:Spd. Yours will have names like PT:Something:Signal at the end.

What’s the best way to tag potential aspects of signals? Does each signal get it’s own aspect tags, or are the generic tags enough?

We follow the according signal book. There are at least 4 different types of main signals in DE:ESO: old western Germany (DB = Deutsche Bundesbahn) called H/V, old eastern Germany (DR = Deutsche Reichsbahn) called Hl, the modern combined signal scheme (Ks), and an earlier test version of that deployed only on one track in southern Germany and likely to be the first of the other ones to be completely faded out (Sv). All have their different state names. "Stop" is called Hp0, Hp0, Ks0, and Hp0, because the older schemes at the end all derive from the pre-WW2 H/V system. "Proceed with track speed" is called Hp1, Hl1, Ks1, and Sv1.

Is ORM accepting new signals to display in its web app?

Sure. Maybe start with JOSM presets first and a MapCSS style so you can do some experiments in JOSM.

Do any of my questions mean anything to the ORM renderer? :)

Enough that it is relevant ;)

Thanks in advance.

P.S.: I tried asking around your IRC chat but it was pretty dead.

I don't see any of that in the last week. Maybe you were not using a registered nick, in that case you are not allowed to talk in the channel.

P.P.S.: I also tried sending this via my own e-mail client and it seems the original message did not arrive, so I'm sending via the web form. If it turns out to be a duplicate, I'm sorry for the spam :)

I only see this one message, need to investigate what went wrong.