-----Original Message----- From: openguides-dev-bounces@openguides.org [mailto:openguides-dev-bounces@openguides.org]On Behalf Of Rev Simon Rumble Sent: 11 January 2005 10:24 To: openguides-dev@openguides.org Subject: [OpenGuides-Dev] Meta metadata?

Hi folks.

I've been thinking perhaps OpenGuides needs the ability to have a comment or similar for some of its metadata. For example, this node is about a long-thin object: http://engineer.openguides.org/?Manchester_Ship_Canal

My thoughts about this are to have a new type of node called a route. Such nodes contain a list of (x,y) or (lat,long) pairs tracing a route. These are joined together by straight lines when displaying on SVG or suchlike.

Another note type with a collection of points is a boundary. This has the distinction of (i) being cyclic and (ii) having an inside and an outside.

There are also locales, which are collections of points.

</braindump>

This makes it hard to provide coordinates. You could just make a point of always picking the middle of such an item, but what if you wanted to pick out the most interesting point?

Consider the Cloaca Maxima in Rome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca_Maxima -- no node in TE yet). It runs through the entire city but the most interesting point, from a tourist POV, would be its entrance into the Tiber.

So I'm thinking the best way to handle this might be multiple sets of coordinates with comments describing their purpose. So for the Manchester Ship Canal, you might say "Boat Museum on Manchester Ship Canal". Cloaca Maxima you might say "Entrance of Cloaca Maxima into Tiber".

One option would be to make each point have a placeholder page, like the "bus stop" pages. It's debatable whether we need that level of detail, unless we can automate the process: GPS upload => LWP

Some examples like stations on a line, clearly should have their own page.

My £0.02

Ivor.