If only it were so simple. We’ve already established that both the slash and the hyphen are ambiguous because they aren’t only used as delimiters. Moreover, in some places like Morocco, Hong Kong, and Jerusalem, the delimiter is just a space. Am I expected to replace the semicolon with a space when mapping a bilingual Chinese–English POI elsewhere in the world?
To reiterate, a substring match would be too naïve, especially if a mere space can be a delimiter between names. “Milan (o)”? “Habana (La)”?
But let’s suppose we ignore the pesky African and Asian languages and cater to only the European languages’ delimiters. What is the order of precedence for these features, which are just the tip of the iceberg?
- Way: Tunnel sous la Manche / Channel Tunnel ‒ Tunnel Ferroviaire Nord / Running Tunnel North (143253058) | OpenStreetMap
- Way: Dover/Douvres - Calais (209213884) | OpenStreetMap
- Relation: Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (45757) | OpenStreetMap
Of course name:* tags are important. However, this discussion presupposes that there are situations where, despite these name:* tags, there’s still a need to place multiple names in name, due to multilingualism, a geopolitical dispute, or some other intentional ambiguity. I agree that delimiters can be confusing, which is why I’m advocating for the one delimiter that causes the least confusion.
It’s not as if this is an unsolved problem. The semicolon already works in a lot of software. However, it doesn’t look pretty in openstreetmap-carto, so mappers are incentivized to preserve the status quo from more than a decade ago when openstreetmap-carto’s labeling represented the state of the art.