History of proposals to fix highway=path ambiguity – and a wayforward?

[Peter_Elderson]

@supsup

@Woazboat

It’s not attempting to redefine highway=path for mappers, that’s just the safe assumption / lowest common denominator for usability that data consumers already need to make today.

However that is not a safe assumption as long as we have paths that are difficult_alpine_hiking and your second picture sharing one tag :-D. I mean, I could definitely work with voting on such assumption and limiting pathto something narrower, but I am probably in a minority there :-).

Suggesting default values for attributes is neither limiting nor redefining the range of features that can be tagged as highway=path.
If the default width is set to 1.5m, and you’re looking at a path of 49.5 cm, it’s still a path, but you have to tag the width explicitly, or else 1.5m will be assumed.
If the default incline is set to between -5% and +5% (0 ± 5%), a climb/descent of 30% is still a path, but you better set the incline explicitly.

In the same way a set of secondary attributes fiitting a particular sub-type of path does not define this path/subtype, it just characterizes it in a nice set of tags, wich you then adapt as needed.

Nothing gets redefined or excluded, it’s just arranging how to handle the spectrum. If mappers and data users can agree on the most found set of helpful attributes covering the range of real world paths, world wide, then you have the most immediate problem out of the way: everybody can/will/should know what to make of a highway=path without attributes. Any characteristics that fall outside of this general default set need to be tagged explicitly.