The ask:
Please do not drift off-topic. This thread is not aboutlamp_type=* vs light:method=* vs lamp:light=* vs lamp:type=*! This thread is not a mass edit proposal (though one may follow!)
all lowercase⌠my shift key is worn out as it is
But more seriously, I find regular[1] keys/values which drift away from standard âlowercase ASCII alphanumerics[2]â significantly more trouble then they are worth (that includes uppercase, whitespace in keys/values, non-ASCII UTF8 chars, various types of parenthesis, backslashes, various quote chars etc).
The JOSM custom preset does not know anything but lamp_type=led since 99.99% of street lamps here have converted to that type of lighting i.e. itâs set as the default value :O)
Seems the majority of lamp mappers have a âledâ pref. âelectricâ will have been some artifact⌠how long weâve powering lamps with âelectricityâ. At any rate⌠think the train has left and data munchers are surely adaptive enough to put led and LED in one lamp type basket.
So⌠lightemittingdiode ? Obviously in jest, but on a somewhat more serious note: here weâre talking about an acronym, so wouldnât LED conform to the requirement of using British English? Or is the requirement of being lowercase more important?
Frankly, Iâm using LED instead of led for my custom template as thatâs how itâs been recommend but after some thinking, led may be the better choice (we use underscore in place of spaces, for example) and I donât mind if my changes are affected by this.
A key value is first of all a string of characters and we could choose any string we like as long as we agree what it means. But it would be practical (easier to remember) if it reminds us of something in the real world that we would like to describe. It is not natural language though, so we donât need to follow the rules of natural language.
Also, it seems that the uppercase LED for lamp_type=* was stagnating at relatively low levels until that time in 2021, where there seems to have been massive import with uppercase valueâŚ
Does anyone know if that import (if it was import) was discussed, and why it chose not to use standard value led at the time?
The tag seems to have been added in edits like Changeset: 102359192 | OpenStreetMap, which were technically not the import, as the import happened in 2019.
If they were discussed, it doesnât seem to have been on the talk-ca mailing list. But Ottawa had an active mapper community at the time and I didnât keep up with what communication methods they were using.
The cuisine key is an example where OSM breaks the rules of orthography in favor of simplicity. Other examples of lower-case acronyms/initialisms: amenity=atm, iata=*, navigationaid=papi and hov=designated, ncn/lcn etc. for networks.
âUSAâ and âFBIâ should be properly uppercased in free-form fields (which contain literal text) such as name or operator.
? Obviously in jest, but on a somewhat more serious note: here weâre talking about an acronym, so wouldnât 