Scale (e.g. 1:10,000) is a paper cartography term, it makes little sense
for computer displays especially for web view. So as a parameter that
controls what should be shown on the map when an object is centered on, I
chose dim(ension) which can be used objectively to calculate zoom, scale,
magnification or whatever is used n a particular mapping system.
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Denny Vrandečić <
denny.vrandecic(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
2013/1/17 Alexrk <alexrk2(a)yahoo.de>
1) Can you explain, what are the motives for
putting a dimension value
directly down to the datatype level. I thought this is just another object
property (or qualifier?) like the name, ISO-region, type, source,
acquisition date.
In order not to loose the Dim-data that is already available from the
Wikipedias, and to use this for scaling. It should really only describe the
rough dimension. I would expect that a building would still have something
like "area" or similar in its own property. Dimension is used for scaling
and uncertainty.
2) IMO there is potential confusion between dim
as the actual objects
size (eg. 20 meter for a building) and dim as a value to control the map
scale for showing this object (eg. 200 meter for a building which is really
only 20 meter). Maybe it would be more clear if this thing is called "map
scale" or the like.
Yes, maybe "dimension" is not a good term. "scale" could be
better, but I
can see in the GeoData extension that there was a shift from scale to dim,
so I assume they might have reasons for that. I put Max Semenik into the
discussion, and hope he can enlighten us a bit on it, since he was working
on this for far longer than me.
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