Sorry for not posting earlier.
Here’s my view of things.
We were 2 “Hebrew Language Mappers”, and 2 “Arabic Language Mappers” (to be as politically correct as possible…)
The 2 Hebrew Language mappers were dimka and myself, each have a few years experience mapping in OSM.
The 2 Arabic Language mappers were not actual mappers. They’re not even registered in OSM, and never mapped, and don’t know the basic stuff like: node, way, relation, tag, value, etc.
But we reached an agreement pretty fast (maybe 5 minutes)
They accepted my proposal:
We’ll have 2 nodes.
The first is Jerusalem in Hebrew, west of the green line and the old city,
and another node named Al Quds in Arabic, east of the green line and the old city.
Both nodes will have similar tagging (place=city, capital=yes)
Personally, I don’t care much about Arabic mapping east of the green line.
If someone wants to map Al Quds as their capital - I won’t interfere.
Personally, I care about the data integrity in the OSM database, and less about a particular renderer.
However, Mikel, who’s the head of the Data Working Group (an OSM Foundation body that regulates the data in the database) said that the Mapnik renderer is important,
and if we don’t solve this issue, then things will be kept as is.
The issue that he wanted to solve was: Which name would show in Mapnik low zoom level.
(Note: At low zoom level you see “Gaza Strip” and not “Israel”, and I don’t see Israeli mappers raising this issue as Mikel raised the Al Quds issue…)
I had 2 suggestions, which were accepted by the Arabic language people:
-
Find a way to show both (as if they were in the same node)
-
Don’t show any.
Mikel said that he needs to check these technical issues with the Mapnik developers, and until they solve this technical issue, then things will stay as they are now:
Hebrew Jerusalem doesn’t show. Its name tag is deleted, and if anyone adds it, then they will be banned from OSM.
(Mind you, the current Al Quds node has a name tag, and it’s showing, so things are not really equal right now…)
I suggested to put a date for resolution, as the Mapnik developers are volunteers, and we can’t expect them to have a quick resolve of this technical issue.
Mikel refused to put a deadline. He acknowledged that it could take many months. I expressed my dissatisfaction, but I’m in no position to tell him what to do.
He said that when he thinks that it’s been taking long enough, then he’ll reopen the issue, and we’ll have to come up with a new agreement.
Which is strange, as we already agreed.
I really don’t know what to do right now.
I don’t like this situation, as there is an agreement on the data. There’s no “mapping war” (and there never was a mapping war! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe that there should be a city node with Hebrew Jerusalem west of the green line)
I really have no idea why the Data Working Group interfered in this situation, and I have less of an idea why Mapnik was brought to the table.
talkat.