[RFC] Feature proposal - use shop=tortilla for tortilla shops and tortillerías

General talk Tagging general discussion
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So, we’ve been working on this proposal since, well, several years now. It’s pretty simple. There are a lot of features and a lot of potential new ones that need this keytag combo. I even believe that some people don’t even map these shops because of the hassle that brings trying to figure out the right way to do it.

I’m sorry, but this proposal process is kind of challenging for me, since English is not my mother tongue and there are too many steps involving the proposal. Furthermore, I don’t know how to use wiki pages nor mailing lists, but the process has been on hold for too long now. If you can help me to get this RFC to the mailing list, please, cross post this announcement on the tagging mailing list on my behalf by sending an email to: tagging@openstreetmap.org

Please comment.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal:Shop%3Dtortilla

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I am really impressed by the work you put into this proposal. As the issue is a single tag here and not a tagging scheme I would just have started to use this tag in your community and, as soon as some hundred shops were tagged, create a wiki page for it with status “in use”. But for sure going through the proposal process will give you a better backing. You surely have my vote … :+1:

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Overall, I agree that tortillerias need a separate tag to identify them as they are so common as stand alone places. I think this by itself is probably sufficient to justify the creation of a new tag (and as @Map_HeRo states, start using it). I think the proposal makes a few generalizations about the layout and function bakeries that are unnecessary and don’t hold up and should probably be removed.
For example:“Exhibition of the product to the public as in bakeries is not common practice” Many bakeries don’t exhibit their goods (except in the bins where they are stored).

It is easy to argue that tortillerias are a subset of bakery, but I think that their distinctiveness and commonness obviates the need for being a subtype of bakery in the OSM tagging scheme. The only argument for this, is that until they get recognized as a widely used tag, using the shop=tortilla tag will result in the places only getting rendered as a basic shop.

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I agree that panaderías and tortillerías should not share the same tag, and that they’re common enough across enough of the world to need a dedicated tag. I also appreciate the mention of areas outside of Latin America. In my city in California, I know of some taquerías that call themselves tortillerías, and a few real tortillerías, but none of them are standalone shops. Most are located within Mexican supermarkets: the supermarket has a tortillería department next to the panadería department. Meanwhile, this tortilla vendor is a food truck in the parking lot of a hamburger restaurant:

One downside is that data consumers and those writing Overpass queries may not remember a shop=tortilla when searching for food shops in general. We’re probably missing dedicated tags for many other kinds of food that are sold by dedicated vendors. For example, I’ve been mapping Middle Eastern pita shops as shop=bakery. There are also a variety of Vietnamese foods that aren’t baked but come out of a press that looks similar to a tortilladora. I’ve been mapping those shops as shop=pastry, even though they aren’t baked and aren’t really eaten like pastries. I had been shying away from shop=food because it seemed like a tag for shops that sell a variety of foods. But if it’s actually for shops that sell a specific miscellaneous food, then maybe that’s a way to handle foods that are less widespread than tortillas.

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In the proposal’s related links, there are a couple of discussions that may be useful to you. This issue came up. The thing is, while a hierarchical approach (shop=food and food=tortilla, pasta, pita, etc.) may be better, the shop=* approach is absolutely prevalent in OSM. We could try to organize our communities and change the way OSM is mapping these shops, try to bring some order, but shop=bakery and others very used keytags will be very hard to bring to our comprehensive proposed hierarchical system.

It’s hard enough to try to push this proposal for me alone, but I’m saying we could try to extend the key food=* to all these shops that sell food in any presentation and not only prepared meals. We could extend the definition of prepared meals to something wider than “not ready for eating immediately (and requiring for example heating/boiling or other simple preparation)”.

The key prefix food:* may be relevant, too. The only issue I can see with this proposal is how prevalent are bakeries, pastries, greengrocers, etc. as food shops. We can still try and make this system compete within OSM.

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Yes, to be clear, I agree with shop=tortilla, because tortillerías are so widespread and coexists with bakeries everywhere they exist. shop=food and food:*=* might be useful for the other kinds of shops that are maybe less common or more local.

By the way, shop=bakery has an interesting history. It was originally used for any kind of bakeshop, including pastry shops. But later, shop=pastry was introduced for pastry shops, so some consider shop=bakery to be strictly for shops that bake and sell bread. Unfortunately, most of the bakeshops I’ve encountered fall somewhere in between, since most pastries use the same equipment. Only doughnut shops are really distinct from bakeries, since their fryers cannot produce bread, but they still call themselves bakeries. Meanwhile, the panadería down the street from me mostly sells pan dulce – bread or pastry? :smiley:

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Yo estoy de acuerdo con todos sus comentarios :+1: :white_check_mark:

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Great proposal, I definitely support this tag! Just the other day I was adding POIs in Los Angeles, CA, USA and came across some tortillerias, wasn’t obvious to me how to tag them. This would solve that!

A minor note, in the proposed entry in the shop= table, it looks like you include an icon that you’ve made. But I believe the actual table only includes icons rendered in OSM-Carto (aka the “Standard Layer”). Adding an icon to Carto is a separate process from having a proposal approved on the wiki, and otherwise there are many other renderers of OSM data. So I suggest removing the icon from the table and instead including it as a “possible rendering” further down. I only say this to head off a preventable reason for someone to vote against your proposal later!

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I thought about this and I don’t think I will remove those parts. While it could be easy for you to argue that tortillerias are a type of bakery, the problem is that local mappers do not agree and we will never be able to establish it, as the concept of tortilleria as a bakery will probably always be strange for new mappers, assuming experienced ones will ever accept it. That’s why tortillerias are so differently tagged right now. For tortillas, to be a type of bread, that can fly, but tortillerías being a type of bakery can’t work, because bakeries sell baked bread, and tortillas wouldn’t need an oven to be produced, instead they use a specialized machine.

The other issue is the asymmetry in the English translation. We will forever read “Panadería tortillería Foo” or “Tortillería Foo” classified with real bakeries, but all the bread people will find is unbaked.

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I Agree with the proposal. shop=tortilla is clear and simple. I’ve had difficulties mapping tortillerías in the past and this would solve many issues. +1

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can tortillas only be made with “automatized processes”? The current definition in the proposal suggests so: “A shop selling tortillas produced with the help of automatized processes like electric machinery.”
How would you tag a shop that sells handmade tortillas? Is using “electric machinery” also considered “automatized”? IMHO the requirement should be dropped, it can be mentioned that typically machinery can be involved, but the focus should be on “selling tortillas” not how they are (implicitly) made. I would suggest to make a subtag for the kind of production, if this is relevant. or just ignore it (if everybody uses the same process).

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No, they can be hand-made, but the shops selling these are different from those made with the aid of machinery. For hand-made tortillas, I propose the craft=tortilla combination; since the process of production is more artisanal. This is relevant because bakeries often involve the analogous use of an oven.

Yes, “electric machinery” is an example of “automatized processes”. Some other commenter said that theoretically these machines could be gas-powered, which I’ve never seen, but sure, they can exist. In my experience, tortilla-maker machines are pretty consistent in how they look and work.

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For hand-made tortillas, I propose the craft=tortilla combination;

my recommendation would be to have a subtag with values for the kind of tortillas or the producting process, where machine made and hand made (for example) are values to explicitly tag it. Just relying on the key craft or shop to imply it will likely not work as expected because not everyone reads about the details and alternatives when they choose a tag.

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Does the proposal mention tortilladoras in order to justify a tag distinct from shop=bakery? Or is craft=tortilla distinct because users need to know if the tortillas they’re getting are made the old-fashioned way (so that they’ll take longer to make, or they’ll be more wholesome, or more expensive)?

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Hand-made tortillas just taste different and sometimes they are not exchangeable to prepare a dish. They are higher-quality, thicker, very variable in size, slower to make, packed differently, sold by number of items, they only require dough, fire, knowledge and a comal to be produced. The crafter have more control on the dimensions of the product and the way they are cooked. They can produce a tortilla with a specific shape. This type of tortilla can be made at home in a stove, but the fact it takes more preparation and time to produce, makes it more practical to just heat tortillas when needed, after purchasing them at the tortilla shop.

A lot of recipes can work with tortilla shop tortillas but not, or at leat not that good, with hand-made tortillas and viceversa. Fried tortillas (totopos) are conspicuous in mexican cuisine, well, they are almost unanimously produced with tortillas from tortilla shops.

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I can definitely appreciate why one would prefer a handmade tortilla – I’m getting hungry just reading your description. But lots of shop=* values can be artisanal too, and craft=* doesn’t necessarily indicate a retailer. For example, craft=bakery is documented to mean a bakehouse that doesn’t sell baked goods on site, but shop=bakery may include artisanal bakeshops. A data consumer would be unlikely to assume that craft=tortilla is a tortilla vendor without more information, so mappers would probably be tempted to apply shop=tortilla to an artisanal tortilla shop. Maybe that’s OK as long as it it also has craft=tortilla at the same time?

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That’s what I thought. They are not necessarily exclusive to each other, but yes, I can see how a production=handmade,machinemade could also work. The thing is, this hand-made tortilla shops are not that common, they could also be described as shop=tortilla, description=handmade wheat tortillas for all I care. That’s why this proposal is not trying to cover hand-made tortilla shops; craft=tortilla is just a complementary proposal. In any case, we can wait and see what people do with existing keys. It’s important to say that this escapes my original proposal and tries to cover fringe cases. Most people will only use shop=tortilla if they sell mainly tortillas, and most of these places will be selling machine-made tortillas; still, a tortillería is not really the place where you can buy hand-made tortillas, this would be a food place where someone (tortillero, tortillera o tortillere) crafts and sells tortillas made by hand. Maybe I should take a look at complementary keys used for bakeries.

If the machinery part is problematic for this to work, I can just get rid of it, but to be clear, this is the generic case I want to cover with this proposal, because like 99% of tortilla shops will offer (semi)automatically produced maize tortillas. If there’s need to go fully specific, then shop=tortilla + grain=maize, wheat + production=hand, machine are due in the proposal. But to keep things real shop=tortilla will be overwhelmingly used to just tag a place which sells any type of tortillas, which 99% of the time will be machine-made maize tortillas.

My question now is, should I cover all fringe cases with other keys to use in combination or should I go with just shop=tortilla for any type of tortilla and let people figure it out collectively? The proposal shop=tortilla remains in any case.

PS. The “99%” is not a real ratio, is just that it’s a number very close to “100%”.

EDIT: I checked taginfo for complementary tags used in combination with shop=bakery as a model and there are no specific keys that are generally used. This is, if people tag a shop as a bakery, they don’t stop to specify if they sell bread from a specific grain or if its produced by any specific method, they just indicate they sell bread there. So, I guess I will drop the “machinery” part and the craft=tortilla combination. About the grain key, I think it’s useful even for bread and other products like pita and arepas, but the production mode is not needed to specify or, if needed, it can be done in description.

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I would strongly suggest to cover all tortilla shops with this proposal, also this rare type.

This will avoid confusion when someone will try to map this highly unusual nonmachined ones and we will get discussion about whether we should ignore approved proposal, make new proposal, invent new shop value or maybe use only craft for what is actually also a shop.

You cannot avoid all confusion but “proposal proposes tag that is not supposed to apply to some rare case, people mapping this rare case thing that new tag applies and there is no good and clear alternative” is a common one.

Thanks!

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For example, craft=bakery is documented to mean a bakehouse that doesn’t sell baked goods on site, but shop=bakery may include artisanal bakeshops.

that’s not how I read the page, the wiki says if they sell on site it should get an additional “node” with shop=bakery (IMHO they should rather get both tags, that’s why I asked on the discussion page, nobody answered so far).

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The only remaining discussion now is about the production method key, but this will only be a recommendation. How would you recommend to tag this? There is one existing documented option in the food:* prefix wiki entry. The recommendation there is to use the handmade value “if the dish is prepared or finalized at the given location without using industrial equipment for production in large scale”. Well, tortillas are not exactly a dish, but this prefix is recommended for shops and amenities.

So, should I recommend food:tortilla=handmade in the proposal for these artisanal tortilla sellers?

In taginfo there is a key made_by, which is barely used with value hand. This is not a documented combination. If there is not a recomendation in the proposal, people will probably use description=“tortillas hechas a mano” or “handmade”. What do you think?

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