MapFactor Forum

Hi Martin,

as requested lets continue this in a new thread. What I mean is that there exist countries which don't use latin script set like China, Russia, Thailand, Serbia...whatever.
Some important places have name:en, name:de and so on....like Moscow
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/1686293227
or Bangkok
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/1628207792
or Belgrade
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/60571493

But many places, especially with lower priorities like villages or street names do not have german or english names but are in letters that look like hieroglyphics for us. Therefore, some special tags exists to show the name in a latin script....not always but every application that uses such tags helps to make it more common
Example name= Велико Средиште (cyrillic) + name:sr-Latn= Veliko Središte (latin)
Often name:en is used to give a name with latin characters (like in Greece)....but in theory this is wrong because it is not an english name but a local name in latin script. So sometimes other tags are used like name:sr-Latn for the example above or name:ja_rm (latin script of Japanese).

What the Navigator currently does is to use name= and name:en..... At least based on my tests. Search for Belgrad (German name) and you will see "Belgrade (Београд)" in the screen....with German phone and Navigator settings. The funny thing is that the Navigator can translate cyrillic to latin. Search for "Kopaonik" in Serbia and you will see only "Копаоник" as search result because there is no name:en. This is correct but since I can not read cyrillic I would blindly press OK without knowing that this is correct. If there is more than one result, I would be lost.

I am not sure what the goal of your company is....i.e. if you are developing a program for western europe only, so this topic would not be on your top list.
But if you you are interested, you should start a discussion with the community.This will not be an easy task because there doesn't exist "one community" but many, with different channels (forum, mailing lists etc).
My first idea would be to take name:xx=[phone setting] (primary) OR name:en OR latin name according to a country specific table OR name=. But I am not a IT developer, only an international OSM mapper.

Kind regards
Thomas