Icons for field values

[1ec5]

The field schema provides for an icon representing the field itself (for now: #30), but it has no way to indicate an icon for an individual option in a combobox or similar. In some cases, the individual values of a key would be more recognizable by a small pictogram than by a textual description. For example:

• mtb:scale:imba values are associated with basic colored shapes, but use emoji and unicode for mtb:scale:imba values openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema#462 is resorting to emoji instead of images.
• network on road route relations is usually associated with route shields, which can look good and discernible at a small size. (Try filtering this list by network.) The actual values follow a format that would only be familiar to more experienced mappers.
• roof:shape is literally about a shape that could be depicted in an icon. Not everyone knows the names well.

I’d recommend that these icons be used only in situations where they would make the name more easily understood, not for decorative purposes. The name would still be present, so downstream consumers wouldn’t be forced to display these icons, which might not be possible anyways in some contexts.

[westnordost]

I’d recommend that these icons be used only in situations where they would make the name more easily understood, not for decorative purposes

This criterium is a little fuzzy. What is considered as helpful for understanding differs from person to person. Do these help to understand the sport, the bridge structure, type of railway crossing, roof shape, italian police type, ... ?
IMO yes, but whether one really needs an icon for "tennis" can be taken into question.

With no clear definition, it is either up to the individual maintainer (@tyrasd) to decide on a case-by-case basis or/and (experience tells me) that more and more unimportant icons will creep in over time. Whether this is a bad thing, I don't know, I am just saying that it is a new can of worms. It may help to at least at the beginning have a strict guideline what icons may be included and which not.

[tyrasd]

As a proof of concept, iD now supports tag-value icons for the crossing:markings tag / field (see openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema#590). Example screenshot:

The implementation (see openstreetmap/iD@ef044cd and openstreetmap/iD@62113dc) is still hardcoded for this specific field, but could relatively easily be later moved into the tagging schema.

[tordans]

As a proof of concept, iD now supports tag-value icons for the crossing:markings tag / field

I think that is a great idea and good solution that looks like something we would want as part of the schema so we can add more custom icons to more translated fields.

[tyrasd]

decide on a case-by-case basis or/and (experience tells me) that more and more unimportant icons will creep in over time.

I think we just have to see how popular this gets. I'd guess that iconography will almost always be of benefit, given that the chosen icons are good, which is IMHO the trickiest part here (e.g. due to the small size of the displayed icons). From my experience, people rarely have the time to put in extra effort to create acceptable icons for presets already (we use much too many generic icons for presets already, see openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema#41), so I'd actually be quite happy if we saw more people interested in making good icons for this new feature.