So far only 3 people left their vote. At the moment ‘front’ is the leader with a +3 score, without ‘against’ votes.
To conclude the discussion I propose to change the definition as follows:
Assume the “viewer” stands straight in front of the sign, looking at it.
position:left / :right Distance towards the left-/right-hand-side of the viewer
position:front Distance away from the sign towards the viewer. Might be negative if the sign points to a place behind it
position:heading Heading from the sign towards the object, given as cardinal direction
position:distance Straight line distance between sign and object
orientation Cardinal direction of the sign face itself (e.g. 90 if it gets full morning sun facing East)
Usually either
- left/right and front
- heading and distance
should be present on any object, depending on the information available.
To clean up the current tagging I guess it is save to change all existing position:distance to position:front, if they are tagged together with position:left or :right.
I still oppose using :front
Its term we are not using in OSM anywhere - we are using forward/backward everywhere.
And as a non english native speaker (With English relatives and a English teacher mom) front/back is not an adverb for direction of movement as are left/right/backward/forward. Its an adjective for location and WHEN used as an adverb it cant stand alone as it needs additional information to/in to what.
Flo
I think there is a genuine difference here, the uses of forward/backward and left/right that I am aware of in OSM are relative to a way which has a defined direction. In this case there is no way. We might say we have a convention referring to an imaginary way between the viewer and the sign, but then which direction does it have?
Can you confirm what you think forward and left/right should mean in this case?
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In this context, we’re not referring to a direction of movement but to a location. That is, ‘front’ is used exactly in the way you describe. The context is given by the main tag: “in front of the sign”
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I found forth as a synonym for in front of. As in
The hydrant is 2m forth from this sign.
Not sure how common that usage is in english, but I feel that it’s better than position:front which to me sounds like the position of the front of the sign.
Edit: Maybe also position:ahead, as the opposite of position:behind
Not common at all. At least not in recent centuries. The word mostly survives in some stock phrases like “back and forth” or “go forth and multiply”. And even there it means something much closer to forward, outward, or away than “in front of”. So it has the disadvantages of “forward” while being more obscure.
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I think the tagging should either
- position:left/right Distance towards the left-/right-hand-side of the viewer
- position:front Distance away from the sign towards the viewer. Might be negative if the sign points to a place behind it.
- direction Cardinal direction of the sign face itself (e.g. 90 if it gets full morning sun facing East)
OR
- position:heading Heading from the sign towards the object, given as cardinal direction
- position:distance Straight line distance between sign and object
This is nearly the same as mueschel summarised, but I think that orientation would be the wrong tag.
Option #1 would allow to use the exact distances from the hydrant sign plate, while option #2 seems to be a valid approach as well.
I really don’t care we use front, forward, forth or ahead in option #1 as all of these mean the direction from the face of the sign toward the viewer. Maybe this wording is the only thing we should cast a vote on?
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I definitely support having these two options documented in the wiki.
There should be a third “legacy” version, describing the current use of position:distance together with position:left/right.